


Howl

by frau_haile



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Bill possesses someone, Blood and Gore, Dipper suffers from depression, Disturbing Themes, Emotional Roller Coaster, Heavy Angst, Homoeroticism, I am going to hurt these characters so fucking past their limits and it will hurt you, If you read this you are signing yourself up for some heavy emotional shit, M/M, Macabre, Major Character Injury, Please be careful and responsible, Romanticism, The death themes of this fic are also heavy, This work may cause some relapses into depression or a strong memory of it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-04-03 14:51:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 93,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4104916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frau_haile/pseuds/frau_haile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four years after Mabel’s death, Dipper Pines has been driven into the horrid pits of human mentality, numbed into a product of severe depression only clinging to his sister's memory. Unknown to him, a certain demon has always been watching, and soon comes to Dipper, laying out an offer that will drastically change the dreary life he has been leading. Only now, Bill Cipher's offer doesn't come in the form of a deal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bloom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Warning for gore and angst.

**Chapter 1**

They found her body three days later, floating idly by the rocky slope, held there by the loose seams of her sweater. Her corpse was drenched to pruning, and worse, was unrecognizable and grotesque due to the water having swept itself up inside her carcass, making her look like a pallid, human water balloon oozing drenched, old blood. Her eyes were dull, grayed balls, her face puffed and white, purpling, decaying along with a serious head injury having cracked her skull three fourths of the way through, water pooling in, and never has death been so sharp, so cold, and so piercingly real, to Dipper Pines.

But in his memory, she is still beautiful. She will always be.

The first time it really hit Dipper – that his twin has passed – he was blinded by it. Suddenly it was all in his being how someone could just  _leave._ A cornucpia of shock was biting at him all at once. His mind was a reel that kept playing the same horrid realization back and forth.

He thought it impossible. How can such bloom, such burst of color, such open sky, be gone?

But he couldn’t do anything now. Mabel was dead.

Mabel was dead, Mabel was dead, Mabel was  _dead._

His only sunshine, his sweetness, his reason, his breath. Mabel was his everything and now she wasn’t here, not anymore. Never again.

That never again of it all was what hurt Dipper the most.

For two years, he dove head-first into what would be the deepest possible pits of human depression. He wasn’t himself; every single thing that had been what he was before her death was ticked off one by one. His grades dropped miserably, he ate almost next to nothing, became a recluse to everyone. The journal, along with several other books he once loved, was stuffed in a trunk and shoved into the basement, like his soul took a train to a wasteland.

Seeing his own self was seeing selfishness.

The paint was peeling off his walls. He spent whatever he could of his time locked in his room, laying in bed with his eyes nailed on the ceiling, tears down his temples as the images flashed through again and again.

Her body at the morgue, steel table and all, his mother gripping him saying, “You don’t want to look, honey.”

And his defiant reply of, “She’s my sister, I will look.”

The distinct smell of bleak sanitation pumped into his system. The sheet was lifted. There she was, stiff flesh, wrinkled skin, hard blankness. Cracked porcelain of messed hair. The thoughts, oh, the thoughts.

She was dead, nothing but a corpse, and this harsh corpse did not even resemble the wondrous person it was. Mabel, a radiance of light, drowned into death wrecked beyond deformation.

It wasn’t fucking fair.

He was angry, almost in a permanent rage under that terrified-looking, glassy-eyed expression he always seemed to be wearing. Dipper’s hands shook all the time, sometimes they would be in tight fists. Dipper rarely spoke, as if shock and anger fought and the aftermath bit off his vocabulary.

Mabel didn’t deserve to die that way, in such early time. She didn’t deserve to be touched by death at fifteen.

Gone were the dreams of watching them – he and his sister – grow old, to hear Mabel’s elderly giggling as she strolled in her wheelchair, to see her hair turn completely white, to be the uncle of her children, to watch her strut down the wedding aisle, to be the one to clap at their graduation when she graces the stage, to hear another sweet  _nighty-night, bro bro._

Instead, it was replaced by frequent visits to her tombstone, as cold as her body, as hard as that chilling reality of never again.

It can’t be now. She’s gone, too young and too early for saying goodbye.

This physical nightmare kept him restlessly awake at night and drained his body by day. As he ate like a bird, you could have said, upon seeing this hollow-faced, trembling-lipped sickliness of a person that Dipper himself was close to death, that he’ll be gone quick as well. But no, he was not – Dipper was not on his way, he’s fucking skipped the marching band and was lying right beside it, in his own personal coffin of unhealthy self-destruction.

It robbed him of sleep, he could not close his eyes for more than a few seconds without seeing his twin sister’s globbed-up body, her head bashed with the skin surrounding it a murky blue-black of swollen flesh and bone, half-buried in the river’s surface, staring into the rest of life she’ll never have.

He couldn’t count the sleepless nights in between bouts of early morning crashes. He’ll go days, five to six, without sleeping. Living nightmares took him over when the sun was up and swallowed him at nights, in the form of gruesome images his own damn head flashed before his eyes. He’d hear the sea, watch the river it adjoined. Calm waves taking lives. The crack of a skull. Drowning.

Toward the end of those two years, his own body hated it. He’d drop at the most untimely hours of the day, in which he’d forget the world existed. Sleeping at night was painful progression, one hour, three. It was a personal achievement to have slept two days in a row. They were pitch-black and dreamless. His mind was too exhausted to conjure any more subconscious images.

But the shock of death, however many times renewed, still numbs over. Unfeeling makes a person hollow. He was a festered wound; Dipper became the damaged shell of human only reserved for those sorry souls who have seen the worst, for the worst that could ever happen for Dipper is to lose _her._ Dipper glorified, venerated, and loved Mabel. Losing her meant losing the world.

Two years like this. He barely passed eleventh grade. Talking of, this “barely passing” was what slapped him right in the face.

It came to him, for the first time in twenty-four months – what would Mabel think of him, wherever she was now, if he didn’t finish high school? If he wasn’t able to get to college and in turn not be able to live his wish of becoming a historian, if instead he’ll end up given in some mental institution under “clinically depressed”, where he could barely function, barely resist, all because of her memory?

Dipper felt sick of himself. He might as well be spitting at her grave.

The haunting, the wrath, was replaced with a brazen will to be better.

It was the end of the physical nightmare.

He was taking the smallest of steps, but in a year, life improved for him. Mabel’s memory was no longer a stake he had to carry. He now held unto it for support. He did better at school, did not chain himself inside his room. Began eating like he normally would. The prescriptions of pills and visits to his shank (Dipper referred to him only by that name) were lessened. Sometimes, he’d even smile.

But underneath this all, Dipper was still mourning. He saw a mirror image of her in everything, from the pancake breakfasts and the juice he drinks in the morning, noting the missing dinosaur pieces. Even chocolate reminded him of the color of her hair. He was still a sad, sorry pile somewhere in there, trying to make everything okay for himself, just trying. He was holding on tight, he’s practically welded his bones into that idea of her, and it was the only thing keeping him together. He couldn’t let go, and he won’t. Not ever.

On the third year after her death, Dipper packed up his bags that summer and took a bus to Gravity Falls, something he didn’t do for two years. It’s something he’s forgotten, blinded by the pain of Mabel’s passing. The joy, the beautiful memories of that place was wiped out, a temporary reformat.

Why did he go? Because he remembered there was a certain figment, a section of their siblinghood that thrived in that town and Dipper was going to sink himself in those last pieces of his sister he had left. Ever since her death, Dipper believed everything was gone. But this wasn’t, not yet.

The attic was just like that summer when they were fifteen, and Dipper could _feel_ her presence – the pink, bright part of the room whispered her name; those stuffed animals, some sock puppets still littered on the floor, cheerful posters - oh, all of it said  _Mabel,_ and Dipper remembered how he dropped to his knees and kissed the end of those draping sheets like he would have kissed her foot, how he hugged her stuffed animals to his chest and saw his tears on them when he pulled back, how he could still catch a whiff of her graham crackers and peach smell on the pillow when he buried his nose on it, bursting with nostalgia, wishing it was his sister herself.

He relived her in that town, in that summer. He had never been more joyful to feel Mabel’s soul once more, and he had never been more grateful that he allowed himself to feel happy again.

But was it really happiness?

Well, Dipper told himself it was.

It barely showed, though; Dipper’s positive swell of emotion was always inward. In the presence of his Grunkle Stan, of Soos, the gloomy look his face memorized never left. He spoke either gruffly or sharply, and if he ever laughed or grinned, it was rare and disappeared quickly. Stan left him alone, in fact the proper word was “avoided” him, as much as possible. In juxtaposition, Dipper worked in the shop without being so much as told, like the schedule was ticking inside him. Though it was mostly because he could think Mabel was with him in that shop as they worked, humming happily under her breath.

Even then, reality still crashed unto him. She is still gone, and fuck, did that matter to Dipper.

He considered consulting the journal about raising her from the dead, he thought of using his soul as a bargaining chip, but then he concluded that Mabel would never forgive him if he tried. To see her face, though living, unhappy, would scar him for the rest of his life.

Rule out rituals and deals, he’d rather keep Mabel a happy, passed soul, damn it if he was miserable.

As such, the end of the physical nightmare was the beginning of the subconscious one. Before, Dipper brought the nightmares to himself. Now, the nightmares bring themselves to him.

The first night he dreamed, he watched Mabel die.

Bus swerved, road derailed, falling falling bang  _splash._

The second night, he watched Mabel die.

Splash. Screams. Splash.

The third, the fourth, the fifth,  _every night_  he could dream, he would dream of Mabel dying. Over and over, her splayed corpse floating, cold and wet and swollen and  _dead._

He wakes up with tears damp on his cheeks every time. Nothing can remove that softness for seeing her die. His head knows it is his greatest fear, and this vicious loop, both of destruction and repair, was wearing Dipper thin, clawing away at his person, tearing holes at his own soul. The thrill of magic in Gravity Falls would have pitied him, for it was at the back of his head, shoved away like most of his being. Those elements that fascinated him dearly were secondary. Mabel came first, at life, at the other side.

Dipper Pines, a dire life that paused, lived in the shadow of his sister’s death.

 

 

A year had passed. Dipper was able to get into college, something he didn’t believe could have happened. At his first day, he was approached by his mother before he left the house - bless that strong woman - and was handed a small box. He was told to open it when he arrived at his dormitory.

It was a bronze locket, and when opened, a curved glass cased what was a lock of hair. He’d know that shade of brown anywhere; he sees it in the mirror. Mabel’s.

Dipper kept it around his neck all school year, feeling his sister close to his heart. At the fourth year anniversary of Mabel’s death, he clasped the locket in his hand, standing over her grave, whilst his parents whispered prayers.

Summer break came around, and Dipper was packed for Gravity Falls.

He did what he had last year, which was, visit Mabel’s tombstone before driving off to the bus stop.

Her grave was of black granite, with her name engraved in silver. The bouquet of pink, yellow and purple flowers he had put there last week were still leaning against it, fighting to keep going.

He took a deep breath, exhaling with a small smile. A little piece of her, everything for Dipper.

“Hey, Mabel.” To anyone that might have been passing, it sounded like he was actually talking to a person, and not a grave. “I miss you,” he continued, “I hope you’re okay, sis.” Like she would come back, she’s just somewhere else, like death isn’t forever.

“I’m going to Gravity Falls for this summer,” Dipper spoke, “Like how we always did. I’m not sure if Soos will still be around, last time I heard from him he’s started his own business somewhere in town, yeah. Didn’t know that guy would go far." When he closed his eyes, he could see her smiling back.

“Mom and dad are doing well, I’m doing well, just…I hope you’re not worrying about me, I’m fine,” he murmured, “I love you, Mabel. See you soon.”

He spent a few more moments of silence, before getting back up again, tracing the last of granite with the pads of his fingers, before giving a last smile and stuffing his hands in his pockets, making his way back to the car. His father was in the passenger’s seat.

“Everything okay?” His father asked, giving him a gentle look with a raised brow. His family has learned to keep pity off the emotion list, and he was more than relieved.

Dipper stepped on the gas, driving away from the cemetery. “All’s fine,” he replied.

 

 

He was glad those terrible dreams no longer came nights in a row. Mabel’s side of the room, kept orderly by Dipper, basked him in a soft, quiet comfort, the hint of Mabel’s life overpowering the nasty thought process somewhere in his head.

Grunkle Stan took him out to the town to visit Soos’ own workshop, then brought him to Greasy’s. He took care to be less chatty, more noncommittal-gesture-y. Dipper didn’t remember Stan to be even the little least affectionate. In addition to the avoiding they’d fallen into practice last year was for Stan to go mute on his ass. Dipper had no idea whom Stan could have possibly grieved for to know about loss, and some voice was telling him it was hushed pity from a reluctant grandparent; ‘look, your sister’s dead, and you’re not being the annoying ball of a twelve-year-old you were, and it’s kinda bugging me, so I’m taking you out on your first day so I won’t seem like an incredible dick when I ignore you for the rest of three months.'

Alternatively: ‘I’m old and I don’t give much of a shit.’

Or maybe he was being genuinely kind, which for Stanford Pines wasn’t a possible case.

(He had no idea what happened when Stan was informed of Mabel’s passing. It was by phone call, and with the way his father looked at the phone with a confused expression, it seemed like Stan hung up quickly. He never called back. He did send, however, an envelope of money on the day of her burial. Grunkle Stan believes money buys everything, from happiness to sympathy.)

When they got back to the shack, Dipper buried the locket of Mabel’s lock of hair in the backyard, just a few trees into the forest where there was a clearing. Dipper visited every day for the past week, and just maybe, a few times, he caught Stan lingering by when he swept the porch. Dipper didn’t ask. The avoiding went both ways.

But, if ever Stan did pay any attention, it was whenever he catches Dipper drinking cola by himself in the kitchen. He wasn’t 21 yet (Stan Pines was a senior who would’ve had a grand time flipping off the law, Dipper learned this at a young age), but Stan would ask him if he wanted a beer, Dipper would mutter his approval, then there would be a six-pack by the legs of the table, Dipper never drinking more than three bottles. Stan kept a close watch on him while the senior downed his flask.

Dipper doesn’t drink because he wants to forget his sister’s death. He drinks because Stan allows him, and because being a little drunk shifts his focus into a more lighthearted one. No negativity flows into his train of thought for the rest of the night.

He went back to doing what he would always do, albeit in little doses. He would read a chapter of a book, then stop midway, squeeze his eyes close and just lie down. It was his head telling him it was exhausted, and haywiring it with more shit was going to ruin him. Two years of constant brainfucks, those haunting mentalities, left Dipper more damaged than he thought he could be. Sometimes he would get a split second of an image, quick with a screech, and he’ll have to squeeze his eyes shut and close whatever book or lay down the pen he had in hand. He was getting used to it. Flipping through the journal, though, gave him less of a headache and more of a pleasant experience, like getting drunk without the alcohol. He kept it inside one of Mabel’s stuffed animals, the giraffe one with a broken seam.

Most of the time, he was just on his bed, looking off into Mabel’s side, half-asleep, maybe dreaming, maybe even having a friendly daytime hallucination, he loses track of a lot of things. When a surge of horrid thoughts seeped into him, though, he welcomed it, like a murderer you let into your home. They came more often than not. In fact, for the past week, he’s been getting a steady string of split second-long image flashes, and they’ve been unpleasant as ever.

It was a Sunday, and Dipper, body slack against his bed in the late afternoon, head swimming bleakly, heard a small but sharp  _clack_ of something being thrown against the triangle window. Brows knitting, shoulders tensing inward, his eyes scraped when he blinked them open and looked at the window. There was nothing.

He barely slumped back again when three more successively came knocking on the glass. He swung a wobbly foot to the floor, failing in steadying himself as he sleazily looked out the window, the heel of his hand digging into the bedside table.

It was just the front yard, nothing more, slightly grey under the retreating orange sun. It was going to be June, but Gravity Falls could never stick to the season. Like yesterday, it will rain. Dipper went back to bed, his eyes glancing at Mabel’s side of the room. He sat down, staring at the childish pile of stuffed animals.

He must be a little drunk.

Then the window came down in a severe, sharp crumble, pieces of glass skidding their way to Dipper’s socked feet and some on his sweatshirt, and Dipper recoiled, thinking  _fuck fuck fuck_ as he registered the entire floor in an inch of water, the wet carpet, the wet fabric of his socks, and eventually, whipping his head to the window, the dripping ends of cracked glass.

Dipper, as if walking on hot coals, slowly tiptoed over broken shards and peeked out the window. He looked down.

Mabel’s gruesome body was on the front yard, ground around her wet to mud, soaked as her flesh.

He woke up in a thrash, body shooting away from the bed and hunching over, breathing in quick wheezes. He knew, with his blurred vision that he was already crying. Dipper dug his hands into his face, feeling sweat and tears damp his fingers. He cries silently, before stealing a look at the window. It’s as intact as ever. The carpet is dry, and wiggling his toes, along with his socks.

Just a dream. All just a dream.

After a quick side glance at the clock that read 5:34, Dipper lay back down, trying to force sobs into mumbles. He blinks, lashes still wet, wiping off the tears with his hands while he stared at the ceiling, as if it’s the only escape.

All him, it wasn’t real, everything’s fine. Everything is fine.

Until he hears a voice.

“Watcha weepin’ for, Pine Tree?”

There is a silhouette of a man’s head, topped with a hat, on the lower side of the ceiling. Dipper could laugh; this daylight lucid nightmare is a trip. If only it was actually fucking funny.

“I’m dreaming,” Dipper slurs. He starts to question the reality of the three-bottle rule. “You’re not real.”

The silhouette coats in a dim, blue light, and he could hear the ‘person’ stepping around, towards him. “Oh boy! Keep telling yourself that, it’s the first time I popped around in your head! Well, if this was actually your head.” The blue light goes out.

Dipper didn’t hear the smile. He heard the manic sneer, however.

“It is, now fuck off, I’ve had enough for today.” He’s hiding his ringing alarm under several numb layers of mind fuck with a polish layer of tipsiness. It’s true; it is the first time the man, or any kind of person aside from Mabel and his own parents appeared in his dreams. Because this is a dream, a nightmare, the only damn explanation.

He tries to ignore how the room is not, in fact, in grayscale.

“Oh, sweet-talker. Come on, it’s not like you didn’t wander off to think of me, when you’re alone, the room dark – “

“I said go away, is that too hard?” Dipper cuts him away, his hand trembling on the side of his face. “Believe me, if the only way to wake up is to slit my own throat, I will do it.”

“You propose a good deal, Pine Tree! But throat cutting isn’t as exciting, also unnecessary, for now. How about you sit up and we have a tiny chit chat? Y’know, haven’t seen you around since you _finally_  hit puberty!”

“No.”

“I’m pretty sure it ain’t that hard – “

On some deep tic inside Dipper’s brain, he makes a consideration for the possibility that Bill is in the physical realm with him. Just a little.

“What are you doing?” He snaps, " What are you _doing?_ Possessing some poor bastard?”

The demon laughs, the most brittle, mechanical laugh Dipper’s ever heard, like someone fed a humor programming into a humanoid and failed, maybe punched the code in reverse.

“This isn’t your head, I can’t just appear in whatever form I please in the physical realm, especially in my signature triangular one. Of course, this is possession!”

The demon spoke so calmly, he got goosebumps. Dipper shook his head against the pillow, straining to stare at the shadowed form of a man on his wall. If this wasn’t a dream, and that's a big if, then there is a person being dragged into shit.

“Get out of here, and then get out of him.”

A beat of silence. “I just want a moment of your time, Dipper Pines.”

Dipper Pines, like that would make a difference. For fuck’s sake, he just  _saw_ his sister dead again, this is not a good time, and it will never be a good time. Dipper gulped, blinked repeatedly and mentally braced himself before he turned towards the demon, rustling the sheets.

Holy hell, he must be dreaming, because the man standing in the middle of the room is goddamned immaculate.

Whoever Bill was possessing must be a model. Tall, with his chin held high and his shoulders in a graceful slope, his svelte form was clad in a rich, yellow tailcoat, the dress shirt pressed and the pants crisp and fitting, donned with a bow tie. He had a gentle face, like a young lady’s, that was twisted with the manic yet contained expression of welcome Bill has pasted over it. A narrow yet strong nose, smooth jawline, perfect brows. The man’s golden-blond hair shone off with the late afternoon sun, and when Bill had taken his top hat off, holding the brim with slender, gloved fingers and gave him a quick bow, the man’s locks appeared to be in soft curls, held loosely by hairspray. The possibility that it was dyed was very likely, since parts of the roots were showing signs of black.

Dipper stayed floored, a mixture of adoration and shock.

“Like what you see? You’re not dreaming,” Due to Bill, the man’s voice was forced to switch tone, reminding Dipper that Bill is inside someone that isn't his own body. It was enough to shake him from his trance.

Dipper stopped looking at the man and began looking at Bill. It was hard, tearing away your attention from that kind of beauty and instead referring to the madness inside all of it.

He swears under his breath, before sitting up, slapping his hands over his face a last resort of waking himself up. Dipper knew he can’t dream of faces he’s never seen before, and no, he hasn’t seen this man prior to anything. The presence of Bill Cipher should be alarming him more, but Dipper couldn’t afford enough panic. He’s used it all up with that big hallucination just minutes ago. 

“Where’d you get him? Dipper grinds out, “You annihilated a periodical movie set? Ransacked a magazine photoshoot? Time travelled to the French Revolution and kidnapped a bourgeoisie?”

Glaring at Bill, he could see the perplexed wrinkle of a nose. “What’s a photo shoot?” Bill’s face is all squints, and Dipper could hear the pages flipping inside the demon’s head, searching his internal dictionary and failing.

Dipper glares harder. “Just answer the question, asshat.”

Bill perks up, tapping his cane (a fucking cane) on the wood floor. “It’s surprising how many people you see walking out of bars looking like this! I think it’s what you humans call a brothel, correct me if I’m wrong? A nexus of human reproduction? Yeah, seems like it! Swimming through this guy’s head, yeesh, it’s all murk!”

“You’re possessing a damn _hooker_? _"_  Oh no, oh fuck.

“Rude! It’s a moral ‘profession’! The calculated performance of gradually going naked in front of a crowd while stimulating libidos! This guy’s still what you idiots call a virgin, or whatever.”

Stripping, he means stripping. So the man is a stripper. Amazing.

“I had to dress him, when I found him outside the establishment he was only wearing a bow tie! And this part,” Bill poked consecutively at his torso, “was covered in glitter! He was wearing slacks and shoes, of course. Had to wander to the dressing room! Seriously, what was the guy thinking going shirtless outside in this kind of town?”

Dipper tried to erase the thoughts of the said man with fewer clothes, squirming slightly. “Are you okay with…all that,” and he made a vague gesture for Bill’s face.

“My vessel identifies as ‘genderqueer’, I think,” Bill replied, with more thought than he should, “And something like me, well, I’m energy! Genderless! I don’t really care.” And Bill taps his cane on the carpet twice, resulting in dull thuds, “Now, business is business.”

There’s a stretched silence, where Bill takes off his hat and places it on Dipper’s bedside table, on which he leaned back on whilst his gloved hands rested over his cane. He could have been posing for a magazine and the editors wouldn’t even have to photoshop him to make it perfect.

“If this isn’t a dream,” Dipper treads, “what are you here for?”

“Glad you’re asking the real questions.” Bill’s tone has changed. Deeper, more serious, that Dipper takes another toll for being surprised.

They’re both silent, Dipper looking defensively at Bill, and Bill solemnly staring at a spot on the wall behind Dipper’s head.

“You’re not doing anything to get me out, I’ll take that as a good sign. Which makes me believe you’ll be willing to listen.”

“Listen to what? World domination plans? Torture devices and methods? A Justin Bieber song?”

Bill shakes his head, laughing. “Yeesh, kid, relax. I have limitations while inside a vessel. I promise, I won’t set you on fire.”

Dipper bites his tongue for whatever retort was at the tip of it.

“I still don’t trust you,” Dipper says instead. Some part inside his thoughts is cooking up conclusion after conclusion, but it was hazy, like watching someone write from the side of your vision.

Bill then looks directly at him. Dipper takes him eye to eye right back, lasts for a moment though, because Dipper can’t look at the damn sun for too long. He opts instead for his messy sheets, the blue, crumpled fleece blanket that he has yet to fold for the whole week, which was suddenly embarrassing.

His mind is blank, for the first time in a long time.

“I’ve seen humans come and go, Pine Tree. And Shooting Star – “

“Four years,” Dipper speaks over him, “why only now?”

_You weren’t in my dreams. You weren’t anywhere._

“Things have been realquiet. Interestingly enough, you haven’t called for a deal, not even once.”

“It’s the last thing Mabel would want,” Dipper says, like trying to cover a lie, “why are you here? If you want a deal, then get out, I’m not making any deals.”

Bill breathes in, and Dipper sees his fingers twiddling with each other. Last time he knew, demons don’t need to take yoga loads of oxygen. Bill closes his eyes, and when he blinks them open, he huffs. Dipper can see his shoulders slump back.

“This isn’t good for you,” he slowly says, and his voice is unrecognizable with how earnest he sounds. Dipper’s face contorts into bewilderment, his jaw going temporarily slack.

“What the fuck,” he argued, “What the fuck - sorry, I mean, _why_  the fuck do you care?”

‘Fuck’ doesn’t seem like a good-enough word. Any word doesn’t seem like a good-enough word. Now that’s stupid, coming from a demon. Coming from Bill Cipher. So fucking stupid. Dipper had the sudden urge to grab him by the padded shoulders of his tailcoat and shake him.

Bill fumbled with his words, opening his mouth, closing it. His eyes waft over the room, looking at anything but Dipper. It was getting disturbing. Bill doesn’t look manic anymore, just…well, nervous.

“Spit it out, you fucking demon,” Dipper all but yells. This boldness might have alarmed twelve-year-old Dipper Pines, but now, a Dipper that lost Mabel is unafraid of a downplayed dream demon in a stripper’s body.

“Pines, you don’t seem to understand your bloodline,” Bill says, agitated, alarmed and quick. “There’s something in your soul. It’s embodied with this…charm. Not everyone is lucky enough to get it.” Bill pauses, as if to find the right words. “Your soul, yours particularly, it’s,” he looks at the ceiling, licks his bottom lip.

“ _What?_ ”

“It’s a shame, alright?” Bill blurted out, a subtextual _I give up_. “It’s a shame, it is, to see a soul like yours just…get broken over,” now Bill is staring directly at him, sucking up on all the eye contact. “There’s only a few of you. I – you can’t just let your soul get riddled with holes, Pine Tree.”

Dipper can’t help himself.

He laughs.

Big, agonizing, empty.

Bill is reserved. He even looks mildly betrayed.

“Well shit,” Dipper sings, remnants of a laugh in is words, shaking his head, “To hell with your sentiment. You’re four years too late to the party.”

“The swearing, the developing alcoholism, Pine Tree – “

Dipper stood up so quick he gave himself a head rush. “It’s Dipper, you fancy, dream-gatecrashing asshole. I don’t care. Everything’s messed up and everything is  _not_  okay _._ Then you waltz in and tell me it’s a shame? Go nuts about my bloodline or what-the-hell-ever? Thanks, I know I’m a fuck-up. You can’t change that, I don’t care about your soul-saving airplane. You’re late, you piece of shit. Now fuck off. Take your shit, shove it up your asshole and  _leave_.”

When the rage cleared from Dipper’s eyes, he sees that Bill was fuming. The demon, who had gone red in the face, is three haps of mortification, his shoulders slumped and his chin lowered.

 “Out,” Dipper commanded, “if you came in here without walking in a door, then you can leave just as well. Get out,  _now,_ Cipher.”

Bill moved like a thawing ice block, his arms stiff as he took his cane and hat, his legs like sticks as he stood up.

 “Fine.” Bill says, his narrowed eyes almost making Dipper weak at the knees, “Right-o. I hope you enjoyed looking at the stripper.”

He snaps his fingers, and then he’s gone.

 

 

Dipper doesn’t dream that night. In fact, he doubts he even “slept”. When he closed his eyes at ten, he sees only a slip of pitch black, and when he opens them again, the attic is bright with the nine o’clock sun. It was just like blinking. He didn’t have even the slightest of headaches, something he's expected from drinking.

Sinking in what happened yesterday is the first thought in Dipper’s head the moment he allows himself to think. Once does, it’s like ripping the pin off of a hand grenade.

Dipper gets out of bed and pulls his trunk from underneath it, which contained a number of choice books (buried under piles and piles of clothing) he has yet to read once again. Bill may only have one spread dedicated to him in the journal, but demons are extensive – there are different variations, and him being dream demon since the beginning to time or not, is still a demon.

Dipper digs into different piles of books, some handwritten, some completely printed in crypt, and pulls out a small codex. It doesn’t have a title, but it is sifted over with bookmarks and flyaway pages. Dipper flicks through the bookmarks and opens it into a spread stuck with notes and folded print. On one page, there is a diagram of a circle with a star inside; its points in the circle line, the five spaces between each two ends scribbled with a different rune.

“I don’t play fair, Cipher,” he mumbles, swiping his thumb across the parchment page, “Especially with demons bringing fishy hospitality.”

On the top of the opposite page in biblical calligraphy read _Devil’s Trap._ Dipper brings the book down with him when he starts the day working at the shop.

 

 

Stan motions for him to quit at around two in the afternoon. It may be the missing patrons, or the extended amount of time Dipper has been sitting at the cashier doing next to nothing. Either way, Dipper hops off the counter and gives Stan a curt nod. He presses the book against his hip, hiding it from view.

With soundless steps, he makes his way to the tool shed and ransacks around for a can of spray paint. The only color available is a dirty kind of dark green, unused. The happy, smiling face of Soos crosses his mind, and Dipper grips it harder before going up back up to the attic.

Dipper laid the book on the floor and hauled the round carpet upside down. He grabs the spray paint, shakes it, and begins his work. When it has dried and the carpet has been flipped upright, Dipper begins the summoning ritual like he’s done it every day of his life, all half-closed eyes and swift precision. On a nearby table where he has crossed out his picture, there is a bottle of holy water, salt and a butterfly knife.

There isn’t even the blue light that was written to come with summoning. Bill Cipher has merely arrived, standing there in the middle of the carpet. Instantly, he is displeased.

“Devil’s Trap,” Bill snarls, like someone tried to diffuse a fire by throwing sugar at it. He looks around the carpet, and he already sounds like he’s ready to blow a gasket. “My  _best_  of greetings to you, Pine Tree.”

Dipper shrugs with one shoulder. “Yeah, glad you could feel that,” he tactfully replies, making a grab for the holy water, “It’s nice conversing with demons when you know their true colors, not when they waltz in your space all friendly.”

Dipper could see Bill’s cane shaking. “You utter idiot, Pines. I'm too powerful. This kind of trap wasn’t made to contain something like me.”

Might have read that somewhere. Dipper ignored it. “Oh yeah? You’re still a demon. You’re going to stay. Now, why did you visit me?”

Bill winces, just the tiniest grunt of pain. He eyes the holy water like Dipper was gripping on a severed, dripping chicken head. “I already told you. Yesterday.”

“Demons lie. Come on, I’m not stupid.”

Bill makes a sound of annoyance from the back of his throat. “Ugh. See, this is the problem with you humans. You can’t take things in their blunt form, you always need some form of expansion, it’s ridiculous.”

Dipper raises his hand, the one holding the bottle.

Bill rolls his eyes, but this comes with a treacherous swallow. “That doesn’t work on me. I’m not hell spawn. I transcend folds of time in age, I’ve been around before religion could be thought of – “

Dipper chucks a spring of holy water over Bill’s chin and neck, wetting his bow tie in the process.

Nothing happened, not even a slight burn. Bill remorsefully pulls out a handkerchief from inside his tailcoat and dabs at the wetness.

“I told you, ugh,  _humans_ ,” he sharply mutters.

Dipper pushes down his embarrassment with a clear of his throat. “What the fuck do you want with me?”

“I could ask you the same thing, you dolt! I told you already, and for crying out loud, this trap is extremely unnecessary, not to mention horrid! You can’t trap power like mine without something potentially blowing up, in this case, my vessel!”

“I’m pretty sure the stripper can hold off until I’m done with you.”

Bill is fuming, he could have set Dipper on fire with just one glare if he wasn’t being contained by spray paint. “If you were a demon like me, you’d understand this clearer. Souls are indefinitely valuable. They’re so much more than a life source, or the powerhouse of human heart and reasoning. Souls are mostly the same, but some are special. I’ve told you this yesterday. Your soul serves a purpose in something beyond your comprehension. It attracts the supernatural, and I – “ Bill breathes out through his nose, because he’s bitten his bottom lip in a clamp of white canines, “I am specifically inclined to yours.”

Dipper grinds his teeth. “Why didn’t you come to me earlier? You know, four years ago was a logical time to come busting in.”

“I thought you wouldn’t be dumb enough to sink into such form of depression, but what do you know! Even now, you’re still taking pills like the pathetic roadkill case you’ve become.” Bill spits.

He swallows down the stabbing urge to lunge at the demon. “What’s your plan? Bandage my ‘soul’ up and tuck me in a baby crib?”

Bill is tethering on his edge, demonstrated by how the soles of his shoes begin to dig into the carpet. “Don’t be silly. Souls can be hurt but never broken, like energy can be transferred but never created nor destroyed. Your soul has taken so much blows that it’s decaying too quickly to be of value, unfortunately for you and me.”

“Get to the point.”

“I'm sorry to say your situation and its effects on you doesn't have a flat-out repair. You're unfixable, Pine Tree. However, there is one unfailingly human thing that can make it bearable. A slip of relief, like the pills you're prescribed. I'm here to grant you that. Happiness.”

Dipper snorts. “Happiness. That’s impossible. Do you think after – “ he stills, then puffs out a quick breath, “ – after everything, that I’ll ever be happy again? Are you blind to me?”

“I’m not doing this for you. One day, you’re going to be of use. I can’t have the last few bits of your soul rendered useless.”

“You actually think I’m going to let you? No, no, shut up,” he snaps when Bill makes to open his mouth. “You know the one thing, the  _only_ thing that can ever make me happy in this fucked up world. You know it. But no, she will rest in peace. If she ever knew the reason why she’s back is because I made a deal with you, that’s the opposite of what she’ll want.”

Bill looks up at the ceiling and makes the most helpless sound of someone dealing with a brainless cretin. “Am I talking with a wall here? There are other ways."

“Yeah, and I’m sure those ‘other ways’ won’t be rotten, too. You can take whatever deal you have up your sleeve and stick it where the sun shines.”

Dipper doesn’t know, but maybe Bill is easing into the trap’s effects, because the demon takes the time and effort to deliver a half-smirk to Dipper. “I am not proposing a dumb deal.”

“Then what? A hundred thousand dollars?”

Bill could have flicked his wrist if only his limits weren’t being pushed. “Golly, money again. I’m sure you humans have a saying for that.”

Dipper scoffs. “Money can’t buy you happiness, but it sure as hell won’t make you sad.”

Bill appears to be pondering this idea for a long moment, even closing his eyes for about a minute or two.

“Do you want it?” The demon asks, solemnly, his piercing eyes looming down at Dipper in a cautious regard.

It was as if brightness flashed before Dipper’s vision, the most splendid of dreams, and he adored it one second, hated it the next. How dare he find an escape. How dare he be happy, or even  _think_ to be happy, when Mabel is rotting inside four panes of plaster. How fucking dare he.

Dipper purses his lips. “No. Mabel is worth more than any amount of money you dangle in my face. And knowing you, I won’t get anything for free.”

“Of course, of course,” Bill mutters after a pause. He makes a point of leaning slightly upon his cane, which made it shake more than it already was. He’s looking directly at Dipper, right in the eye in a manner that would have been rude if they weren’t having a staring contest. Dipper is just human, and a bell of fear tinkles in his chest – it seems like Bill is visually dissecting him. Dipper grips the bottle of holy water like it’s a machete.

“Come here,” Bill speaks, softly. Dipper doesn’t stop the shudder from rocking his spine.

He lets out a shaky sigh, his whole body stiffening up. “And why would I do that.”

It’s Bill’s turn to scoff. “If you know what Devil’s Traps are supposed to do to demons, then you know that I can’t light up my own finger if I tried. This trap suffocates me. And since you’re not a demon, you can always back up.”

It’s weird, having Bill speak in a gentle manner, but Dipper knew the demon was right. He’s powerless in that space, and in human form.

Dipper places the holy water back on the table and grabs the butterfly knife instead, stuffing it in his back pocket.

Bill's chuckle is like a rusty hinge. “Humor me, Pine Tree.”

Dipper tactfully walks the five feet distance until the toes of his sock-covered feet are a centimeter away from the rug’s curve. In their little back and forth, Dipper may have forgotten that he was dealing with a demon in a very attractive physical form, and that said demon was looking straight at him in a way that would make most strangers heat up at the attention. He has never been in such close proximity with someone so handsome, it tethered into beauty. He struggles to keep his chin up and fights a blush off his face.

Bill stops looking at him, thank God, and has now dropped his eyes where Dipper’s neck met shoulder. The boy is suddenly highly conscious of his faded, red sweatshirt and the pair of jeans he’s worn since yesterday, the way his shoulder blades pop up sharply, his sullen skin, circles around his tired eyes, a developing stoop in posture, how he hasn’t brushed his head of brown mess ever since he arrived in this town. Dipper is exceptionally unremarkable, magnified, standing in front of the grandness that was whoever Bill is possessing, which technically, is Bill himself.

He feels fingers dig into his wrist before a sharp, forward tug, then he’s stumbled inside the trap, right into Bill’s space, and he gets a nose full of cheap perfume scented with vanilla oil. Dipper is fascinated and terrified at the same moment, and when he gasps, Bill speaks right over it.

“I’m not going to hurt you, I have no use for doing so,” Bill says, voice low, like he could incinerate the whole room with its quiet sensuality, “I’ve got nothing else I can take from you. So for the love of all that isn't holy, stop acting like I want to tear your liver from the inside out. Last thing on my list, boy.”

There’s a pounding in Dipper’s ears, his alarming heartbeat. With a horrid shudder, those very words go shooting like a bullet to the long-untapped parts of his brain, slicing off deeper than the layers of hideous memories glue-gunned and chunked over by four years of misery, and Dipper’s lungs suck in a breath, because for the first time in years, he feels something punch him in the gut that isn’t regret or pain.

It’s a dirty craving, and Dipper doesn’t know if he likes what he’s feeling or not.

Half of Dipper wants to recoil, half of him wants to get his hands on the demon’s body.

Oh fuck, Dipper is so gone.

He’s had four years and counting taken away from his life, he’s broken himself to being nothing short of miserable, he tells himself he’s okay but he’s not, he’s never been since Mabel was found floating lifelessly in a river below a fifty-foot cliff with thirty more dead bodies. He is done, and he is gone.

The hand trails up to Dipper’s forearm, and without a word, Bill has leaned in, and it’s as if his throat twisted into itself. There’s warmth of breath in his ear, blowing softly, the brush of a cheek against his own, and Dipper strains for balance, putting his hands on Bill’s shoulders, not pushing. He just holds.

Then there are lips on his skin, pressing delicately where his jaw connected with his ear, and Dipper feels himself go slack. Bill brings his tongue and teeth, biting, licking, taking his skin between teeth and suckling, running his tongue over it. He lets himself simmer in the mildly pleasurable sensation, before Bill keeps going lower, kissing down his neck. This is when Dipper shyly leans away.

Bill is flushed, looking slurred, lips parted and wet, but the way his eyes bore into Dipper conceals a raging intent. The sight is dizzying, and Dipper breathes even harder. Little gray clouds dance in front of them.  Dipper doesn’t want to think, he doesn’t want to reason.

“How's about you do me a favor, Pine Tree?” Bill asks, voice merely above a whisper. Dipper squeezes his eyes shut, muscle memory from dealing with nightmares, and tells himself, with as much effect as trying to smash a cement block with a needle, that it’s just another man, not a demon.

“Look,” Bill goes in again, kissing near Dipper’s jawline, “I know I won’t make you happy, but it sure as hell won’t make you sad, baby.” It was said against his skin, he could feel his voice, could smell the vanilla on Bill, but he kept his eyes closed. “The point is I like you, kid. No deals, no nothing. Just you and me."

In a rush of motion, Dipper pushes back completely, leaving Bill to stand by himself. He backs up and out of the carpet, determined and terrified, then pulls the butterfly knife from his pocket and flips it open. Bill is gripping ever so tightly on his cane.

Then Dipper gets down, digs the knife in the carpet, and slashes away, the sound of thickly tearing cloth filling the quiet, accompanied by a light gust of wind, though the window was tightly shut. The boy flips the knife shut, places it on the table and is back at his feet.

Dipper doesn’t want to think, doesn’t want to reason.

He makes for Bill, slams the demon back until he hits the bedside table, and their lips are on each other before Dipper could see things straight. Bill kisses with his mouth, messy and wet and rough, pushing against Dipper whilst his gloved fingers fist themselves in Dipper’s hair. Dipper is swept away, everything is too much, Bill is all over him, feels like Bill wants to get inside of him. Dipper forgets each inhibition he’s ever thought of, because Bill is hot against him, his body is warm, his lips are soft and they taste like fruit, he smells so good and for the love everything, he wants to lose himself in Bill.

Dipper’s hands clear away the table, pushing aside his clock, books and pens. With an unknown strength, Dipper grips at Bill's thigh and heaves Bill on top until the demon is sitting. Legs wrap around his torso, locking him in place, but Dipper doesn’t mind, not at all. Bill assaults his lips ever more, taking the height advantage expertly.

Dipper doesn’t know what he’s doing, and frankly, he doesn’t give a fuck right now. He forgets everything and he feels numb, a good numb. Dipper doesn’t feel where his hands are lingering to. The one thing he knows is he’s holding onto Bill, and Bill is holding onto him.

When Bill pulls back, both of them are panting, and Dipper’s eyes are still closed. Bill is rustling with his hands – he’s taking his gloves off – and he throws the pair somewhere behind Dipper, down on the floor. His hands are soft, Dipper could tell, as the demon puts his palm against his cheek, his thumb going in small circles.

“I’m so sorry,” Bill mumbles. Dipper winces, biting at his inner cheek, and he wishes that the demon isn’t dense enough that he could see how much he didn’t want to talk, much less look at him.

Dipper wordlessly leans in again, this time the kiss is stubborn. Just lips and tongue and mouth, and Dipper relishes the detachment. Thankfully, Bill gets the message – he kisses him for God knows how long, until Dipper’s lips are sore and dulled, until a trail of saliva is slicking its way down Bill’s chin, until it gets too hot and Dipper could sense sweat drip from his forehead.

No spark at all, just a dull thrum of sweet, sweet lust.

“Do you want me to make this seem like a dream, Pine Tree?” Bill suggests when they’ve parted, and Dipper couldn’t wish for anything better.

He moves forward to nuzzle his face over Bill’s shoulder, hoping he could just crawl away and hide from everything. Bill is still running his hands in his hair, smoothing out tangles. His hands are quite stiff – the vessel probably accompanies his stripping with a pole.

“Please.”

“Then shh,” the demon whispers, “Keep ‘em eyes closed, Pine Tree. You know what to expect when I drop by again.”

Dipper wakes up.


	2. Red

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From you to us, my friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: If you really love birds, proceed with caution.

**Chapter 2**

Dipper sucks in air to bang into his lungs as if he’s been a second too close to drowning. He scrambles up, every breath he takes making his torso rock. How long he has been asleep? Dipper flings the blankets off him and is at the floor immediately, looking through the dropped books and other whatnots he’s cleared away from the table and instead peeling his eyes for his alarm clock. He finds it soon wedged underneath his bed.

His clock, skewed to the side, read a dim 8:56. He’s been out for at most four hours. Dipper reaches out a wary hand to it and straightens up, rubbing out the dust with his sleeve and placing it back on the table. His eyes flick over to _that_ spot for a moment, and he's hit with panic before hurriedly piling back up all the books and paper and pens that had been banished to the floor back on top of the surface.

All covered-up. Good. He breathes out heavily, leaning on his ice-cold hands as he gripped on the table’s edge.

The weird thing was, it didn’t feel like he dreamt. The memory of those lips, those hands, was too real and vivid to be a dream. What it did feel like? Like someone clumsily tried to knock him out. Dipper could feel the blow somewhere in his pounding skull.

Bill Cipher didn’t promise dreaming. He promised sleep. To cover up Dipper’s grinding self-loathing without the sensitivity of an actual departure.

Dipper runs a hand through his hair. It didn’t feel the same. He gulps.

An echoing string of denial and fear was stirring in his stomach as he bolted to the bathroom. Clammy fingers slipped twice upon trying to open the doorknob. He made his way to the sink and shakily opened the tap, cupping his unsteady hands under the water and splashing it unto his face.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

He’s not as disgusted with himself as he thought he would after mouth-kissing a demon. Instead, it scared him shitless.

Because dammit, it was so good, in the worst way possible. The way it went down his gut left a slick and strong feeling he couldn’t describe, mostly because it was the first time he felt it with this level of intensity. It’s the one current “nice” spot in the fucked up attic that was his brain. Bill fed him a rush of high; he merely devoured it all in.

He should be more unnerved, should itch to take the longest fucking shower to rid himself from the smell of gentle vanilla, but he doesn’t.

He doesn’t feel dull, or dead. His whole body rings as if he took five shots of espressos down the hatch. All his senses are electrified, swarming and _alive_ that it’s scaring him. The heat in his chest won’t quell, his fingers won’t stop jittering. At least in dealing with his depression, he knows the path; you get a slowly dawning distress that sucks the life out of you, makes you a laughable excuse for a human being, you feel it hovering over your heart but you don’t have the willpower to shake it off because that _something_ has taken it from you. This? It's unmapped territory.

He cranes his neck, gently touching that small, fading mark just below his jawline. It was barely there, Dipper almost didn’t feel the bite of his molars, the meager suction that Bill had given it was the only thing making those small, slight pinpricks of pink appear.

Maybe if he covered it up, he would be fine. Maybe if it was gone, he would be fine.

He wipes his face off with his sweatshirt and jogs back to the attic. There, he digs around for a particularly big turtleneck coat among his clothes. When he finds it, a deep blue one made of a waterproof material that has a zipper, he quickly changes, shoving his arms in the turtleneck and zipping it up to his chin. It’s inner lining was made of cotton, comfortably warm. The cold was seeping in anyway, so it won’t look too suspicious when he goes downstairs and Stan sees him like this. Hopefully.

Dipper throws the red sweatshirt into the laundry basket. Somewhere into last year, he’s learned to wash his clothes. He believes Mabel would be proud.

There is no mirror in the attic, but Dipper is significantly calmer, feeling the cloth of the turtleneck tickle his ears.

The set up from the summoning is still there. Table, candles and all, though thankfully the candles were out. The butterfly knife is hanging halfway from the table’s edge, steadily on its way to dropping. Dipper hadn't noticed when he put it down.

He did not even have to convince himself cleaning up wouldn’t be so bad. He put everything away like he used them for murder and the blood was still dripping off of them, finally pushing the spare table back into the small, dusty closet of the aclove where he found it. He shuts the closet door hard, in a manner that said he never wanted to open it again.

As he tucked away the butterfly knife, stuffing it under his mattress, Dipper tries not to think that it would have been easier to stab the demon in the stomach rather than tear away at the carpet. He does doubt that cheap iron would do much to hurt Bill.

He walks away from the bed, only to stop upon sensing he had stepped on something through his socks. Putting his foot away, he sees it’s one of Bill’s leather gloves, the other not far, staring innocently back at him.

Dipper’s grinds his teeth, snatches them from the ground, and jams both gloves into one of his coat’s pockets.

 

 

The thought of having at least one bottle of alcohol convinces Dipper to pad his way out of the attic and go downstairs. Turning the corner, he finds that there is no one in the living room.

When he hears the back door shutting, he almost jumps out of his skin. Walking the hall, he finds Stan carrying two boxes of pizza from the door to the kitchen. Stan might not have seen him, or he was just really good at pretending not to see someone three feet away. Stan disappears into the kitchen. Dipper quietly follows suit.

It’s the one act of courtesy Dipper knows never to decline; Stan’s osmosis-assimilated invitation to a meal.

Dinner was always bought from somewhere else. A bucket of chicken, Chinese, hamburgers, pizza. Really, Stan was being way too friendly to him for this. Everything they were eating was a college kid’s economy-buggered, sodium-sprinkled dietician nightmare. He must be recreating the dorm room feel, or Stan was fucking with him. They frequently had it late. One time, they ate at eleven in the evening.

This is when they have their once-daily exchange of words. It was even becoming part of their avoiding scheme; Stan greeting with him a gruff “Hey, kid” and Dipper grunting his acknowledgement.

No doubt, Grunkle Stan has built a glass wall between them. He wants to leave Dipper alone, but he sincerely doesn’t want to be an asshole about it.

For Dipper, he couldn’t seem to feel affection; much less did he want to. After his sister passed, it was as if all the cheer in the world was sucked dry, which was also a main reason why he's like this. He was always seeing the worst in situations, in people. Grunkle Stan’s silence was one of them.

To stay in his lane, Dipper kept his own mouth shut.

The presence of those two in the same kitchen was painful to witness. With the way Dipper held himself, there are places he'd rather be.

As living in his own world, Stan places the boxes of pizza on the table while casually whistling. There are two kinds, one packed to the crusts with meat slices, the other all green and red with pepper, (possibly) raw onion and chives. There is no in-between when Stanford Pines orders the pizza.

They sit in opposite ends of the table. No one dares make eye contact. It’s possibly just Dipper, or Stan may be a really good actor. The silence that settles is one they’ve gotten used to as Dipper takes a slice of pizza like he’s robbing it from someone else’s family and quietly starts eating.

“Hey, kid.” Stan rumbles while he chews. His eyes are pasted on his food. Dipper indistinctly wonders if Stan ever got a heart attack eating food like this.

He makes a grumbling sound in return, and the conversation cuts off.

Then Stan abruptly stands up. The grating of the chair’s legs against the floor makes Dipper snap his head up toward the senior. Stan walked over to open the fridge and bent into it, emerging with a case of beer. When he turns back, he’s looking directly at Dipper.

God, how long has it been since Stan has looked at him? Has it always been this drilling? He feels smaller in his chair, almost letting the crust of his pizza slip from his fingers.

Stan goes back to his seat and drops the case down at the table’s feet, taking two bottles and putting them on top of the table, pushing one to Dipper and taking the other for his own.

When he flicks his attention back to Stan, the older man is giving him a fond look. The slight upturn of his lips is a crooked grin, and the lines on his face are no longer harrowing. They’re graceful, and Dipper doesn’t know the right way to react. He just…stares.

“So hey, kid,” Stan begins again, that rough voice sounding friendly, popping off the cap of his beer by the edge of the table, “how’s it hanging?”

It’s possibly the tenth complete sentence Stan has vocalized to him since he’s arrived. Dipper finds himself in the middle of something he never thought would happen, and he's wide-eyed at Stan whilst his back is rigidly pressing against his chair’s rest. He gets this shrouding feeling, that something inevitable is about to happen and he won’t be able to stop it.

How is this happening? Why is Stan talking to him? He’s never bothered last year, and there’s no reason to start now.

With the way Stan’s expression quickly changes from confident nonchalance to unexpected embarrassment, Dipper must be doing something with his face that gave off alarm. How did he look? Petrified? Makes sense, because he feels exactly like a frightened little woodland creature in the face of a lion.

Stan lowers his half-eaten pizza, posture slouching, a speck of hope having just flew out the window for him when he says, “Y’know what, take your time, kid. I might have talked too soon.”

Stan has pressed his lips together, his face scrunching up as if he made a stupid mistake. A rock settles heavily down Dipper’s stomach.

_Take your time. I might have talked too soon._

Stan has chucked a hammer through that wall of glass. He talks like he’s only seen Dipper through a one-way window, like he's ached with every day he held his words.

If there is the epitome of the word terrible, Dipper is feeling it right now in slow build-ups. It’s akin to being sorry for hurting a gentle elephant in the zoo; a continuous mantra of _how dare you_ is playing in his head and his stomach curdles with how fast his thoughts are zipping.

Dipper is hurtled back to that point two years ago, sitting at that principal’s office, listening to his parents and the suited, balding man behind the desk run over his possible expulsion - _"_ _Mr. and Mrs. Pines, I’m sorry, but your son is failing almost every subject, he treats the teaching staff like they’re shadows, he chooses to be rude rather than try to be polite, he has incurred numerous offenses, overall this behavior is unacceptable. I have a recommendation from the guidance counselor to get him a therapist as soon as possible."_

He remembers thinking – _Mabel, I’ve lost, oh god Mabel, I’ve failed Mom and Dad, I’m so sorry, I’ve failed you –_ and the next one, which hurt more – _If I’m not the smart guy, then who am I?_

Selfish. So fucking selfish.

Dipper tries to think of something quick enough amidst the renewed dash of rotten memories, but what comes out of his mind is only half-processed, and even he, upon hearing his own voice say it out loud, wants to stuff the word back down his throat.

“W-Waddles.” He stutters.

The resulting look on Stan’s face makes Dipper feel even worse, if that was possible. “What was that, kid?”

There was absolutely nothing in his tone that says he didn’t hear what Dipper said. In any case, Stan heard him clear as a bell, and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t hear him say it again.

The guilt ruptures, making Dipper purse his lips as he swallows down the big lump in his throat. “Waddles,” he croaks, a little bit louder.

Stan doesn’t say it, but Dipper feels it hang in the air, _All of you, do you hear him? My grandnephew is talking! My grandnephew is talking to me!_

The way Stan replies shows he is treading the line between extreme caution and flooding joy. “I – uh – well,” the senior stutters, his hands tapping at the table’s surface. “What – what about him?”

Dipper doesn’t choose his words, a half-improvised response. “I haven’t…I-I haven’t seen him anywhere. What happened to him?”

It all comes rushing back. Last year he visited, there was no sign of Waddles. He had watched Stan bury a three-hour expired Gompers in the backyard the day he left. And for the week or so he was here, now has it only come to his attention that his sister’s beloved pig still was not around.

Stan’s glasses begin to fog near the nose. “Waddles, he, uh…he ran away after,” he pauses there, and Dipper just knows Stan had bitten at his tongue, “Look, my guess is animals have gut feels too. Maybe Waddles sensed it, you kids not coming back after that? I tried looking for him, but he wasn’t anywhere.”

His tone is detached from his words. Stan doesn’t say any more, but Dipper hears the rest of whatever Stan was trying to say like white noise blaring in his head.

Dipper feels as if someone threw a brick in his face. Waddles had run away years ago and he never even noticed, nor had he questioned it. Gompers’ remains are fertilizing the backyard soil and he never thought twice about that goat. And now the truth of his Grunkle Stan’s silence is sitting right in front of him, loud but unsaid.

Goddammit, he’s been stupid, too narrow, too caught up in thinking about how much people hated having him around or wanted to leave him alone, cramped in that little space where he is nothing but _unloved,_ that for one second, he never thought about what those people might actually be feeling.

Who knew, the illusions don’t stop at watching Mabel die. They follow into his relationships with other people.

“Kid, trust me, I would have been glad to take care of that ole pig, but. Yeah.”

That gruff voice brings him back down to reality, a gentle coax, so much unlike that snappy tone of his shank. Dipper shakes his head in little jerks.

Stan is speaking a lot more rapidly now. “We…we could always get another one, if you want? I know Waddles meant a lot to your sister, and your sister means a lot to you – “

“No, there’s no need for that.”

He brings his half-eaten pizza down back into the box, appetite long gone. He just wants to drink, but even the beer sitting on the table seems to glare at him.

How dare Dipper look him in the eye, how dare he eat this man’s food, how dare he live under his roof. How dare he. All this time, Dipper thought Stan loathed him. For being a trespasser to his property, for being distraught, for taking the blow of Mabel’s death too hard. Little did Dipper know, it was the opposite. This treacherous silence wasn’t constructed by Stan. Stan didn’t make the glass wall. He did.

“Stan,” he whispered, the name sounding strange coming from his mouth, “I’m terribly, terribly sorry.”

The tension is shattered so hard, Dipper goes a little dizzy.

It’s the last thing Stan expected to hear, judging from how taken-aback he looks. After a moment, Stan smiled sadly. "It's all right, kiddo."

Dipper lets out a shaky sigh, taking a tissue and dabbing it at the grease on his fingers. “You don’t get it. I thought you hated me, a lot more than back when I was a twelve year old kid. I didn’t talk to you, and you didn’t talk to me, so I thought that confirmed it –“

“Shucks, Dipper,” Stan cut in, but he didn’t sound a lick of disrespectful, “If I hated you, I would have called up your parents to stop letting you go here, really make my spit reach their phone receivers, ya get me? Hell, if I hated you, I wouldn’t even let you into my home, or allow you eat at my table. You’d never even breach property line,” he lets out a nervous laugh here, “and you know it. That you’re the only grandnephew I have. I don’t even have a grandniece anymore. You’re the closest I have to a grand - grand anything! Whatever I do, I could never hate you, kid.”

Dipper exhales, and when he breathes again, his shoulders hike up with a wicked shudder, taking it all in. He couldn’t fathom the value of those words. He’s already smiling, he knows by how his face muscles strain in a wonderful manner, and he remembers the act as something he’d do when he’s the least bit cheerful.

It’s a good feeling.

He looks toward Grunkle Stan, and the senior is smiling as well.

“Y’know kid, you can always talk to me. I mean, you’re welcome to do it. You don’t call me ‘Grunkle’ for nothing,” he sings, before taking a swig of beer.

“I’ll remember." He reaches for his own beer, popping it open by the corner of the table in the same manner Stan had opened his (with more honest difficulty), and brought the bottle to his lips, sipping. The ease comes in quick stages. He likes how he can breathe easier by the minute.

With how Grunkle Stan resumes eating his pizza slices with renewed vigor, he’s enjoying the ease, too.

Dipper takes his slice again. It’s a good feeling, how easily he can do hat.

“Also,” Stan prattled on, his first syllable considerably higher, “why would you even think that, kid? I mean, I know I’m a dick. You ‘prolly figured that out seven dang years ago. But!” He gets this goofy face, gulping down his last mouthful of food, “When you’re in doubt, always remember that this wrinkly mess is just an asshole, not a fucking asshole.”

Dipper snorts. Stan cackles.

They soon finish about half of the pizza and the rest of the case, had a quiet conversation until midnight, and Dipper swears, while dragging his groggy, drunk self up the stairs and back to the attic, that he has never had a better bandage.

 

 

_The road where Mabel’s bus skidded off the curving cliff is engraved into his head, thin like paper, giving off the smell of wet earth and vehicle fumes, and Dipper always knows he will be witness to something catastrophic. In his first dream, his vision was forced to watch from the edge as the bus banged unto the rocks, the first few people falling out injured and tumbling to the waters, some ruthlessly clinging to the bus’s hinges, clamoring for life as the unfortunate drowned. This time, his head allowed himself a generous warm-up; he is walking listlessly by the side of the road._

_It’s a wonderful ten seconds of peace, before the distant sounds of sharply turning rubber against cement and frantic honking becomes louder and louder. Eventually, the blur of a big vehicle’s shadow zips and looms past him for a brief moment, and Dipper is flung with the enormity of its aftermath of blowing wind, making him bring a hand in front of his face in protection. He brings it down in a flash, because the rusty, hard_ clang _of the bus breaking against the metal hedging zaps at Dipper’s nerves like the beating drums of a looming apocalypse, and he’s willed by some morbid curiosity to see it come._

_The whack of bending metal is achingly loud. The screams, well, they’re louder._

_Dipper jogs near the edge, and when he’s about five feet from it, he is stopped._

_Clumps of dust and rocks have risen up into the air, and they join together, molding up into the gritty shape of a triangle. A blue light flashes luminously, too bright all of a sudden, swallowing up all the color of Dipper’s made-up realm, blinding him._

_When it neuters back to normal and Dipper can see once more, everything is black, white, and grey._

_“Nice place you have here, kid!” Bill Cipher greets him, along with a twirl of his little black cane. His yellow triangular body glows softly, like Dipper might have smoked something, floating just above the edge. The outlying shouts and begs of terror from below are the deranged version of the demon’s echoing voice. “I had a skittish feeling this would be the default setting of your coconut. Devastating, I might add! Needs more doors.”_

_Before, Dipper had witnessed this event as if he really was part of it. Now, it’s the background, and Dipper grimly stared at Bill._

_There’s flailing of water, more cries of help. He doesn’t hear Mabel’s voice; he never did. He won’t be able to._

_“You,” Dipper’s robotic voice wonders, “what are you doing here?”_

_Bill swings towards Dipper like a spinning wheel, stilling upside down in front of Dipper’s empty face._

_“Because,” Bill starts, “I know where he is.”_

I know where he is.

It’s the same crudely engraved message on the wooden floor, right beside where Dipper had torn the carpet with the butterfly knife. With how tiring the wood seemed to be punctured, the message was strenuously etched either with a barbecue stick or someone’s pinky fingernail.

Dipper stares, astonished, his mind racing along with his chest. Waking up to that dream was bizarre, and he spent a while in bed trying to recall and review the dream over and over in his head until it drove itself blurry and Dipper left it alone. Until now.

He had been cleaning Mabel’s side of the room, sweeping, dusting off her stuffed animals, tucking her bed sheets back in order (even if no one, not even Dipper, has been spending their time there. Dipper tidied that place up in an almost religious manner), and eventually he wound up cleaning the entire attic. He was just about to vacuum the carpet when he found the note.

I know where he is. What was Bill trying to say?

“Think harder, Dipper,” he grumbles, “who, or what could possibly need finding?”

Finding. Something was had been taken, lost, or had run away.

It hits him like a truck.

Dipper abandons the vacuum, hands jittery, a raving grin cutting his face. He had long abandoned of the coat he had been wearing for the whole night, satisfied to see that Bill’s subtle mark has cleared from his neck by morning. Instead, he now wears an orange flannel, even confident enough to roll the sleeves up to his elbows. Quickly, he rooted under his bed and haggled for his pair of boots, shakily stuffing them on.

He doesn’t even question where he’s going, or what direction he should be taking. He just knows in his gut that Bill has left clues, or will lead the way.

If it is a sham, well, Dipper’s not too attached yet. And what could possibly be Bill’s reason for lying? He said it himself; he has no reason to hurt Dipper.

He’s never had a vest since he had thrown it out when he was sixteen, so Dipper shrugs on a thin jacket, filling the pockets inside with a ball of yarn, his notebook and a pencil.  On his way down the squeaking stairs, the thought of bringing the journal crosses his mind. He doesn’t consider it.

“I’m going out!” He shouts toward the living room while opening the back door. Stan heartily roars back, after a short pause, “Back before twelve, kid! And I ain’t talking about two hours from now! Don’t get yourself in prison!”

(He shouted it from the gift shop. God knows what those unfortunate tourists must be thinking of ‘Mr. Mystery’ now.)

He ties one end of the giant ball of yarn around the rickety doorknob. Once out through the door, he gets back when he almost steps on a lifeless-looking bird lying on the welcome mat. It’s dull, brown wings splayed around its apple-shaped body are crumpled and dirty. It had died escaping from something.

The least Dipper could do was give it a proper dying bed. “You’re in heaven now, buddy." He bends down to lift the tiny bird into his palm. Judging from the small size, the bird was a passerine.

He almost yells when suddenly, the bird sprang its frantic wings and flew right up, straight into the forest, 

He hurriedly runs after the bird’s direction, gripping the quickly diminishing ball of yarn in one hand. There was a beautiful trilling chirp that echoed as the bird flew from tree to tree. As Dipper ran, following this tune, he identified the bird; it was a nightingale.

He was a third of a mile into the forest, still an area that was vaguely familiar to him, when the sound of the song and fluttering wings are gone for a longer amount of time. Dipper hears his own heavy breathing with the silence.

Abruptly, something drops down a nearby tree. It makes a light thud as it falls on damp leaves and mud.

It’s the nightingale.

And Dipper is revolted, because he sees that all its feathers have been pulled out, leaving a carmine complexion, a merciless image of a plucked chick.

He looks forward, only to see the bird’s feathers have been lined up to form a trail, going much, much deeper. Face going pale, he trudges on, his other free hand pressed to his mouth with every instance he finds a plucked feather all lined along with a two-foot interval; wingtips, coverts and primaries, scapulars and tertials where the roots even showed bits of carelessly torn flesh, until Dipper could almost retch seeing the last of small, puffy alula feathers clumped up in a straight row.

This may be the end, or so Dipper wished dearly. The feathers had stopped appearing, but when the nauseated boy looks around, there wasn’t a sign of anything, just an endless stretch of moss and trees.

As Dipper stands, alone in the middle of the forest, he begins to pick up a lingering, faint smell of astringent metal and something too feeble to identify properly. There’s a light pinprick of a liquid droplet that hits Dipper’s cheek. It rolls snugly down his jaw.

Bringing his finger to it, Dipper realizes the liquid is blood. Freshly scarlet and still warm.

Something else drops in front of him. A brown leaf, a foot away, shines with a drop of red.

But apparently, Bill wasn’t joking in the least. Droplets of blood continue to fall forward, through and through, farther into the woods. Dipper, getting weak at the stomach, follows the trail. His yarn is almost up.

Not long into his trek, the ranges of trees begin to change. There, not so far ahead, looked like what seemed to be a small, secluded clearing.

The blood stops dripping when he enters it. The first thing that hits his nose full-on is an odd mixture of wet earth and something long decayed, he remembers it from a brief fascination with mushrooms. In here, it’s a lot more saturated, his boots sink about a centimeter into the softer ground, littered with drenched leaves. Trees appear to have been chopped ages ago with the dirty tree stumps. He must be around here, maybe living like a wild boar? Feeding on scraps littered about? Will Dipper even recognize him?

On a slab of stone not far away, the blood drips again.

Dipper comes closer.

Hidden behind the great mass of stone is a half-dragged bone carcass of an animal. It is small, like a dog’s, but its neck is stubby and stoops, its torso stocky, the tail stunted short to a long-lost curl. Pieces of the rib cage have been torn off and scattered about the ground, molding over and showing signs of teeth having gnawed through the skeleton pieces. The little feet did not end in paws. They were mud-dipped hooves.

No horns to justify a goat, leg bones too tiny to be a deer’s.

The skeleton belonged to a pig.

Dropping the small bundle of yarn, it dawns on him that Bill had led him to Waddles - whatever was left of him.

It’s just there, so silent and still and empty, the pig that Mabel had loved dearly, now just like what you’d see hanging in a science lab, like what’s left from a butchery, and Dipper has no words to describe how fucking horrified he is.

He had expected for Bill to lead him to a perfectly alive Waddles, not his corpse. He brought along the yarn thinking it would bring joy to the pig to see something he’d long associated with his friend Mabel. Dipper did not expect, above everything, with directions from the entity who promised him happiness, to find him _dead._ It wasn’t a slap to the face. It was worse, it was a goddamned insult to Mabel’s memory, to whatever sanity Dipper had left in his dwindled brain.

Bile rises up Dipper’s throat, and he doesn’t stop the urge to retch. He only has a few seconds to jog for a tree before he spills what he’s got, the sound of slippery choking and swallowing painful to his own ears and even more terrible for his tongue, acridly biting away, its taste alone making Dipper launch into a second take.

The wretchedness floods over quick, someone pouring out the orange juice all too fast and kept going as it spills around the table. It’s unlike what he had experienced when he heard the words _Mabel’s gone_. Back then, it had been a slow, painfully burning simmer gripping his heart tighter and tighter, but this is having his intestines yanked out through his bellybutton. A pang driven too fast that leaves mercury swimming in your veins.

The tears come as the puking dry heaves away. Shallowly demanded sobs flowing out uncontrollably are just as worse as his silent crying from remembering his twin sister’s death. The picture of Waddles’ strewn skeleton is more ghastly a second time, because Dipper is being bombarded with another cruel reality he has to absorb, as if he hadn’t had enough.

Waddles had run away, and he is dead. The cause, clearly, is by prey to natural selection. If the bigger paws sunk into the mud around his skeleton isn’t resolution enough, Waddles, at best guess, was eaten by something in the forest. God knows what, but for sure, it had claws.

He can’t feel his face with how numb his whole body is. The tears just keep falling in anguished panic. Waddles, though he did not love him as much as Mabel did, still mattered a great deal. And damn it, he gave a fuck if his bones were on display somewhere. He gave a fuck if he died.

The inside of his head is woozy, like each squiggle of his brain was replaced with cotton balls. There goes his hope, there goes a few bits of his mental stability. The taste of his own sick is glued to the plate of his tongue, Dipper can’t stand straight. He’d be anywhere but here. He can’t even imagine how Waddles had been dragged over to this side of the forest, much less picture how he was feasted on. He weakly pushes down the new desire to retch again.

Keeping it together was out of the question. He can’t.

Still heaving little sobs, he reaches again for the small bundle of yarn, slightly muddied, and makes a knot on one of the rib bones hanging loose from Waddles’ skeleton.

“From you to us, my friend,” his wrecked voice speaks, but he forces it through. It’s the least he could give for Waddles.

He turns away, walks out of that clearing, and doesn’t risk looking back.

 

 

Entering through the back door a handful of minutes after three in the afternoon, he’s thankful Grunkle Stan isn’t around. If he was, he had no idea how to lie about his puffed eyes and red face. The string of yarn hangs down from the door and snakes against the wooden floorboard, loosely threading into the forest trees. Dipper tries his best not to look at it for too long and steadily makes his way back to the attic.

He’s felt this way before. That barren, sterilized blur of despair. If you asked Dipper, it’s not the worst kind of numbness, but Dipper can lose himself in it so well. It doesn’t go away quickly and it ingrains itself under his skin. After seeing something so terrible, flipping his stomach inside out with disgust while simultaneously stabbing his chest, it just leaves him empty.

It’s not the worst, but it’s bad.

Swinging the attic door open, there’s a man inside his room.

He was tailored suit, manic smile, slender fingers and swept hair. Bill Cipher, standing in the middle of the carpet just out of spite, is beauty and terror at the same time.

It worries Dipper how he isn’t surprised. He’s lost the thrill for any sort of violence, of vocabulary. Weakness files through his system and he feels nothing but grief diluting away at him.

“So, didja like my little surprise, Pine Tree?" he sings, "I gave a great deal of effort trying to show you! I just had to make do with that tiny birdie. I’m gonna take a guess and say you cried them tears of joy!"

Dipper stares at him. Emotion can’t trick its way to his face.

But inside, oh, under all that skin, Dipper is hurtling, enraged, devastated, and he crams it all in one word when he snarled, voice low, “Like.”

Bill’s face brightens. “Yes, lil’ fella?”

His tone is still unchanged, but he adds just a little drop of conviction. “You – you thought that I would like it.”

“Why, of course I did! Weren’t you wondering where that squealer had gone to? You asked, I simply answered your curiosity, kid.”

The urge to shed another wave of tears clots behind his face. With every word that trips from Bill’s lips, the more he just wants to take something kind of lethal and die for a few weeks, if only that was possible. He breathes in, his nails making moons on the heels of his hands with how hard he’s fisting them.

“You thought that I would like it,” Dipper stammers out, “you actually thought that.”

Bill squints slightly. “Well, yes, do I need to keep repeating it for you? Is this a new thing for humans?”

Dipper closes his eyes for a long, scorching moment. His words boil when he croaks, “Do I look like I liked it, Bill? Do I? Look at me, shitstain. Tell me. Do I look like I liked seeing Waddles’ skeleton?”

And Bill does, looking him over with examining eyes. A small frown tugs at his lips. He doesn’t give a response, instead standing achingly straight and stiff.

”The answer is no, you little bitch,” Dipper spits. “No.” He says it again, louder, but he only sounds weaker than he intended. “In fact, it would have been better _not_ knowing what had happened to him rather than to see whatever the fuck you just showed me."

He was purposely avoiding the word. He didn’t want to say it; it was too damn painful.

“I just gave you what you asked for,” Bill quietly responds, as if for the first time, he doesn’t know what might happen if he uttered those words.

“I didn’t ask for shit. I didn’t ask anything of you. You know what?” He bites his lip, “Fuck you. Seriously. I – I can’t even imagine just how much you fucked this up.” He may be spitting out curse after curse, but they lacked any sort of power, Dipper is speaking solely from grief and nothing more. Extremities were whizzing inside him; he was just too furious and wounded that everything came out in one tone; vulnerability.

“I – you just, you know what?” Dipper’s hopeless eyes glaze with heat, “I am so fucking mad at you right now. So much. All I want to do is beat the crap right out of you but – but I am so angry that I don’t even have the _energy_ to show it, I can’t even bring out my rage,” And he adds, a moment after his statement hangs heavily in the air, “You promised me happiness. That is not how you do it.”

If Bill could go any more rigid, he just did.

It’s hard to believe it’s the same person he’s had his mouth on, the same man who dug his hands in his hair and gave him a slip of escape, who tasted like cherries and kissed down his neck. The thought seemed so otherworldly, that paper covering of beauty turning transparent.

Yes, he had been right. Bill Cipher, inside that viciously breathtaking form of a human body, is still a demon, capable of being a dick just for the fun of it and because he knows it will sting. Fuck him for regarding even a pinprick of the otherwise.

Dipper doesn’t bother to show it in his face how livid he really was. He quits looking at Bill, instead storming to his bed and sitting at the edge, burying his heated face in his sweaty palms. Misery overrides anger; it just hurt him too much.

It would be so good, such a relief, to have something. Frankly, Dipper can’t have it, even if it’s standing right in front of him. Not for now.

“Should I leave?” Bill says, too silently.

Dipper whips his head toward the demon. His glare is slight, but with how Bills’ eyes widen a fraction, it must be seething.

No more words are said, because Bill disappears, and Dipper is left recalling the stretch of yarn, all the way into the forest, hating how the pig they loved, however he tried, couldn’t ever come home again.

 

 

Upon informing Grunkle Stan about where the yarn leads when the senior asked about it, he had helped Dipper collect Waddles’ bones and burn them to charred ashes, piling it into a glass jar. Half was scattered around the yard, the rest left for Dipper to place on Mabel’s bedside drawer.

Dipper’s state had gone to a flat line. Not once was he able to dream anything, and something tells him Bill had tapped around in his head. He wasn’t sure if it was a bad thing or not. Now that distance had paved way to give Dipper a clearer head, he was now strictly aware of how he really felt. Angry and betrayed. He didn’t bother asking himself why he even felt the latter; he’d just go in circles trying to avoid the point.

Even then, his resent was neutered, controlled, as if he knew that there was a way to bring it out with a sure possibility of feeling better. Unlike before, he didn’t know who he could blame; in fact, there was no one to blame for his sister’s death, which led him to quell everything into himself. His anger was everywhere, carelessly fuming inside him and dispersing hatefully towards others. Here, his focus shifts, he knows the one thing he could sink his rage into – Bill.

The things he wanted to do, oh, if it was only in his power, he would do them.

For one, Dipper loved the idea of giving Bill an actual earful, not just the tip of the pile.

He was driven to impatience. He felt like his head was a fire that would madden if he doesn’t do anything soon. On what marks as the first Monday on the second month of summer, he sets back the summoning equipment, the little strands of self-control snapping gone with each light of a candle, each herb thrown in the bowl, with the few final words of Latin muttered brokenly along with a drop of a match.

When Bill finally appears, standing in the middle of the room atop the torn carpet exactly where he had last time, Dipper’s reserve spills tenfold.

“You asshole,” the boy growls, “you motherfucking asshole.”

The demon isn’t in his usual manically happy disposition. He hadn’t even sung out a greeting, or said some backwards, smartass compliment. It takes a moment for him to realize Bill isn’t wearing his coat, just the dress shirt, skewed bow tie, and the gold-buttoned vest of thick cloth that hugged his form almost like a corset would have. He looks so much younger, about twenty-one if not seventeen, the coat having added five years to what his vessel’s actual age was. The hat is gone, his hands are free of the cane, like Bill didn’t come knowing he was to commence business. He had come to transact it out.

His face, as dazzling as ever, is dawned with a stony expression. If Dipper didn’t know any better, he would have said Bill abandoned the vessel. It’s weird enough seeing those hands without gloves.

“If you take your grey matter out of your butthole and listen, it would be my pleasure to explain,” Bill answers.

Dipper scowls. “Cram it up yours.”

“Will you quit it with the idea of shoving things up my anus?” He sounds genuinely annoyed. “It doesn’t help. Now listen for once.”

“Just great, Bill,” Dipper prattles on, “just _wonderful,_ isn’t it? It’s so nice to be a demon. It’s the sunshine of your life to show people the fucked up things they’d rather not see. God knows why I even trusted you. Oh right, because you – “

“Shut up,” Bill spits.

Dipper’s gut broils. “ _You’re_ telling me to shut up? I can’t fucking believe you right now. You demons, of course. You’re worse than cursed spirits, because your kind doesn’t ever change, you don’t even have a slight chance. You’re an asshole because you _can._ Because you _know_ it’s gonna be a great, flaming ‘screw you’ to my face and you love how it’s like that, don’t you?

“But hey, you just have to keep denying how fucked up you are. Congratulations, I know you’ve been flipping the switches around in my head so I can’t dream. If you haven’t already been ‘watching’ me since I stepped foot into this town at twelve, then you’d know I’m used to my own brain shitting on me. You don’t need to; I don’t want you to, the same with whatever crap you pulled with Waddles.”

Bill recoils. It seems like he has nothing snarky or witty prepared.

“I ask,” Bill mumbles, "just a moment of your time, Pine Tree.”

Dipper’s wearing patience makes him halfheartedly spit out, “Say it.”

The demon doesn’t waste time. “This may not be a deal, but I am as honest and precise with my personal affiliations as I am with transactions. They're my only bargaining hand. I have lived on it for longer than your puny human brain can comprehend. So when I picked up that you were looking for your pig, naturally, it’s part of our thing. I showed you where he was.”

“And you didn’t even think that seeing Waddles like that couldn't actually be as good as your genius demon brain thinks it is? Do you think seeing a dead pet is a joke to you?”

“I’m a demon, like what you said. I could - I could hardly care less. And being immortal, death is always a joke to me. The funniest one, to be honest.”

“You fucked up. That’s the bottom line."

“And you think I don’t know that?” His perfect eyebrows scrunch together, “With how you reacted? How you’re acting now? I may be a demon, but I’m not dense.”

Hearing that, Dipper is unpleasantly stunned to silence.

“I know,” Bill says again, “I know you’re not proud about this, and I messed up what I promised. I’ve been interacting with humans for so long, but only now do I really see how their emotions work. This the longest time I’ve inhabited a vessel, and I think he’s telling me things. Furthermore, you’re telling me things.”

Dipper is shaking his head, his mouth is in a flat line, and he doesn’t know right now if it’s just a tricking tactic, and Bill is dancing him around with his puppet strings. It’s too real, that’s what. Too raw to be a lie.

“With what you’ve been through with Mabel – “

“ _Don’t_ you say her name.”

Bill immediately stops talking that it reminds Dipper of a trained dog. His sister’s name leaving the demon’s mouth is more profound; he doesn’t want to hear it in that voice again.

The tension is so battered down, Dipper feels odd. A crazy mix of anger, frustration, and pity. With how Bill fidgets his feet and fumbles his hands, those lovely fingers intertwining and clasping together, this is not a usual situation for him either.

“Pine Tree,” Bill says again, and it's amazing how the cheerfulness is back in his voice, “for the sake of what we’ve agreed, how can I apologize?”

“You’re not just going to give it up?"

Bill smiles. “You’re too important to give up.”

“Get out.”

There is no way to identify if Bill's little bow is sincere or not. "Anything you ask, Pine Tree."

The demon vanishes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks to the people who’ve looked through various drafts of this chapter, shhppa and Anne_the_Dreamer. You both know how the draft looks like before I expand. Bill does, too!


	3. Jubilation

**Chapter 3**

“Kid!” Grunkle Stan calls all the way from the gift shop that afternoon, “Kid, there’s another one of those boxy things!”

Dipper hurriedly dries off his hands and abandons the kitchen, where he had been washing dishes of their usual ramen lunch, and almost knocks down the ‘Employees Only’ door with how hard he slams it open.

“Okay, thanks,” Dipper says all too fast while jogs, swiftly grabbing the paper-wrapped rectangular package from his Grunkle’s wrinkly hands. “I’ll thank Mom through the phone again.”

“Whatever that is,” Stan mutters with a wiry tilt of his head, “you sure that’s from your mom? You’ve been getting them for two weeks, they’re real heavy, there’s no address on the corner, not even a name - ”

“Mom’s busy,” Dipper hopes he delivers it convincingly enough, with a quick smile and a straight glance at Stan, “orders from my thera – shank.”

Stan’s bushy eyebrows hike up his lined forehead. “You sure you’re okay, kid?”

“Okay as I’ll ever be,” Dipper replies, his feet stepping backwards, “don’t worry, it’s one of those – those building games?” He makes a vague gesture for something lengthy, “Yeah, um, not all parts can be sent at once.” He has his back against the swinging door, seeming eager to get the package away, “I’ll be fine, Grunkle Stan.”

The concern on Stan’s face is so apparent, Dipper felt a little bad. “All right, if you need help building the Golden Gate, I’m always open,” the senior advises, “be careful with those stuff, you capiche? You have, like, eight boxes? Ten?”

“Fourteen, I capiche,” Dipper supplies in a beat, pushing into the door an inch, “and I’ll be going up now.”

“Sure, and I really mean be careful, kid. I stepped on a Lego once. Then I filed a lawsuit for fifteen thousand bucks. Then I lost.” He squints, giving Dipper a deep, strained look, “Word of the wise; never step on a Lego, kid.”

Dipper only nods vigorously, before disappearing behind the squeaking door.

Once he does, the forced smile is wiped off his face, replaced with an irritated scowl. The package weighs down massively against his hands, and he has to partly hug it to his chest to carry it all the way up to the attic. Inside, it makes a loud thud being dropped on the floor by the curtained alcove, where behind it lay a boulder-like stack of similarly shaped packages, a mess of brown paper and tape, all half opened except for one.

Resting underneath the pile is one free of paper and tape, giving a peek to the side of a gleaming, burnished bar of gold.

“Just how many more of these?” He mutters to himself, lowering to his knees, “This is getting stupid.”

He takes a scissor from beside the pile and begins cutting through the one he had recently received. Peeling off just a small part from the edge gave the same result he had been getting for almost two weeks now, the glossed edge of deep, rich yellow.

There was no other way to explain it. He knew no other entity that could be delivering to him all those gold bars. Bill could be the only one anonymously sending them. If Bill had stolen them or took them from his own stash, Dipper doesn’t know nor does he care. He doesn’t want them.

If this was Bill’s way of apologizing, it’s utter crap; Dipper would be happier to take a stone and chuck it at the demon’s face rather than have gold, that’s how furious Dipper is.

And why does Bill even  _try?_

The demon displays just how blind he can be to the effect of showing people fucked up things. To this day, it makes Dipper shudder; he doesn’t need to look at Waddles’ jar of ash on Mabel’s drawer to feel suddenly terrified at the most surreal times of the day.

What an apology. Dipper could bend over laughing at Bill’s thickness.

Dipper seals back the latest bar of gold, passing his fingers back on the torn paper, and remorsefully places it amongst the pile before tugging forth the alcove curtain with a frown.

 

 

It's three minutes into seven that night when Dipper, once again trying to absorb a book he hasn’t opened for who knows how long, idle and slightly drowsy, hears the triangular window of his room sharply click unlocked before slowly screeching open.

Automatically, that dreadful sense of something horrible about to happen grips at his lungs. He just _knows_ it, hears it like a signal. In a blink, everything seems shiftily feigned but dangerous as his heart begins hammering at his ribcage, and it feels like the blood in his veins was replaced with bleach, alarming him to the nerves of his toes.

_Not again, please not again._

It’s no help reassuring himself that at least, it’s not the first one.Time had been passing way beyond his comprehension that maybe, he hadn’t noticed he had fallen asleep.

After driving off Bill, the dreams came back. None of them could classify as nightmares, but in them he permanently had a strange, haunting sense that the nightmare was glued over with wallpaper, ready to tear through that thin sheet and lounge at him.

Maybe the hallucinations are back too, and if he’s ‘awake’, there’s no stopping anything. Dipper curses even feeling tired during the day, wishing that he drank coffee at four; an adaptive habit he’s developed overtime for the past years now paused because of the recent mind-blocking.

“I locked the window,” he clamors to himself, book beginning to shake on his lap, “I locked the window, there’s nothing there.”

Though instead of a smashed glass, he hears tutting instead.

“Jeez, kid, you’re way off!”

Cold washes over his back when he snaps his eyes open with a flurry of panic. It’s not Mabel's corpse at the foot of his bed. It’s Bill, fully dressed, bowtie sharp and the ends of his collar pinned with tiny silver nubs, the comely face of his vessel refined with smooth brushes of powder. His faultless, crowning image of tailored suit and proud stature is starkly misplaced in the messy attic room.

“Holy _shit,_ ” Dipper curses in surprise of Bill’s arrival, backing up in reflex whilst the book tumbled to the mattress. Bill sneers.

“Usually, they call me Bill.”

Dipper still has not collected himself when he cries, “What are you doing here? You – you start sending over fucking gold bars, not come and explain what the fuck was that about then you greet me via hallucination with a backhand joke? The fuck’s your problem?”

Bill appears he hasn’t heard the first part of his prattle. “Hmm, really gotta work on that hallucination thingy,” Bill reflects, insistently tapping at his nose, “it seems like I can’t spontaneously appear without it. Boy, do you have the jitters!”

“Like hell I won’t. There’s a pile of gold behind that curtain and you didn’t respond to summoning when I got the first one – "

“Lay off, I’m not a machine,” he says with an annoyed roll of his eyes, making his way around the bed to stand by Dipper’s side, “did you know that the amount I’ve given you approximates to about twelve million, give or take? Cut me some slack, kiddo. Now give me your hands.”

Dipper blanches at the absurd amount, still trying to put two and two a perspective of just how enormous twelve million dollars is when he rasps, “What in the hell makes you think I’ll do that?”

Something in how Bill holds his shoulders indicates urgency. “You’ve kissed me like you’re going for the tonsils. Give me your hands, Pine Tree.”

“I’m not giving you anything until you open your damn mouth, Bill."

Bill groans, bordering on impatience. “This guy. Stripper. You find it underneath all that mess your brain manufactures? He works in a club. He’s due tonight. And you’re going to watch.”

Whatever trance of being overwhelmed by the ridiculous sum of money currently in the same room with him was thrown out the window. He shakes his head, almost feeling sorry for Bill not being able to see just how impractical the idea was.

“Really, Bill? D’you think watching you will make up for shit?”

Bill is even more eager, seemingly so sure that what he had planned will turn Dipper’s mind around. “Come on, I promise, you’ll enjoy it. And you know I don't need to lie.”

Dipper keeps shaking his head. “Bill, no. I’m not watching you strip, and I’m certainly not watching you strip to make up for your bullcrap.”

“Look, you – you don’t even need to watch it, you can just listen – “

“No.”

Bill takes a deep breath, heaving out in a sigh. “…Beer.”

Dipper stiffens. “There’s a case in the fridge.”

The demon flicks his eyes towards the ceiling in a brief moment of hesitance, like knowing he’s going to drop the match on gasoline. “Whiskey.”

Dipper ponders this hard. Whiskey. How long has it been since he last had it? The last frat party he went to? It’s like hearing ice cream on a hot day.

“And take away the gold,” Dipper strictly adds.

Bill’s expression shifts to happiness so quickly, the boy just convinces himself he blinked.

“Brilliant!” he sings, flashing Dipper a wide smile whilst stretching out his bare hands. Dipper notes his nails painted yellow and tipped with gold. “You won’t regret anything but your developing alcoholism, kid.”

Dipper prudently gives his hands to Bill, still feeling distrust pulsing at his gut, “I sure hope.”

Bill tightly clasps their hands together, nudging in between Dipper’s fingers and slipping his own in them, intertwining. Dipper has to set aside the blood rush. Sue him; Bill is still riding someone who could've made him swoon.

There’s a phrase of mumbled, proficient Latin, and as if waking up from a boundless sleep, Dipper opens his eyes to find himself standing on wet pavement where a dark alleyway begins, gripping hands with Bill under the dim, quivering light of an orange streetlamp. Bill slowly slips his hands away; in fact the proper word was ‘shyly’, instead grabbing tightly at Dipper’s wrist, as if something lethal might run out of the shadows and snatch him away.

“Teleportation, kid. Not a dream, all real.”

Dipper feels like shrugging a lot, maybe the aftershock of travel. “Where are we?” He asks, feet swaying off. Bill tugs on him a lot more carefully.

“Just further north of this town. Almost to the border,” he replies, “gets a truckload of truckers.”

Their walk on damp backroad is quick. Bill turns a few corners, leading him across an assortment of broken down or closed shops and properties, until the last boarded-up convenience store they go by has Dipper face to face with the black and neon exterior of a club. No flashing lights, just a single-colored neon sign with the club’s name on the roof and also hanging by the upper floors. There were, however, more than a dozen cars, and Bill was right – there were a considerable number of trucks as well, parked around the vicinity. If Dipper didn’t know any better, he’d say it was a seedy restaurant with bad design ethics.

The lone bouncer beside the double door is outrageously threatening just by the callous pinch of his nose between a pair of thin eyes, but Bill walks up to him and slaps him at the back, carelessly amiable.

“Drew!" Bill shouts, "How's it hangin', buddy? Don’t worry, you can let this guy in, he 'voted' last year,” he points a finger at Dipper, who tries in vain not to look inferior.

The bouncer ignores Bill with a twitch of his jaw, and simply opens the door.

"How could I have voted last year when there was nothing to vote for?" Dipper hisses behind Bill's back. Bill just shrugs, laughing.

Color bombards Dipper’s eyes as Bill slips him in. It’s bright with red and blue, intersecting at some points to shine off violet. The club is lively, patrons on their plush seats while waitresses serve them, swaying their hips as they pass. The music matches the thumping of Dipper’s heart, there are claps and shouts of encouragement from a side of the stage that Dipper can’t see from where he stands, lapsed by a curtain, guarded by two bouncers. The lights are dimmer there.

Oh, Gravity Falls. Such a quiet, innocent town. So much for that.

Bill’s hand on his wrist is vice-like as he trudges Dipper between patrons, practically shoving them out of the way. They approach an empty bar, where Bill deposits him, making him sit on the one closest to the stage, where a curvy woman in her early twenties is singing about penises (and how she likes them in her mouth). It blends into a blur, however, when Bill leans in and barks, “I’ll be back. Don’t talk to anyone except Colby and don’t over drink.”

And just after Bill inches away, he goes back in again, lips pressing threateningly against Dipper's ear, "If you talk to anyone else, I _will_ set you on fire."

The grip is a lot tighter on his wrist before Bill walks off quickly, on the way somewhere to a backstage.

Dipper allows himself to shudder, catching his breath as he pivots in his seat to lean against the counter. A burly guy is behind it, on his way to his thirties, wearing an apron and wiping off a shot glass. Strangely, he thinks this is how Stan might've looked like when he was younger.

“Colby here,” the guy says, and his voice is booming enough that Dipper hears it over the trills of the singer, “what’ll it be?”

“Whiskey, please.” Dipper shouts in return, voice deep but not loud. “Make it three.”

“Wow,” he takes a bottle from the shelf and pours the brownish-honey liquid in the glasses he’s put on the counter, “something rough, man?”

“Fucking tell me about it,” Dipper yells. The man’s laugh is big and hiccup-ish.

Colby puts the bottle back. “Looks to me you’re not here to stare at a girl’s ass.”

Dipper makes a grab for the first glass. "There are better ways to get off.” And he tips back his whole upper body as he chugs down the whiskey, letting it stab down his throat in an acidic wash, and he only swallows once as he bangs the glass back on the counter.

“Easy, man,” Colby says as Dipper hacks out the aftertaste. He just smiles brokenly at him.

Colby continues. “Hey, uh, so you’re his boyfriend?”

Dipper squints at him. “Far from it.”

“Well, I'm not gonna ask about...that, so, uh, did you happen to notice that something’s a little…off with him?”

Dipper makes a negative noise from the back of his throat. “What.”

“Jehan isn’t usually like that.” Colby stage-whispers. “That guy is one of the gentlest people you’ll ever meet. Soft words, cat petting, those kinds of things. I hear he goes to church on Sundays.” He says the last bit with a secretive forward lean, complete with a hand half-covering his mouth, exactly like a white suburban mother.

“He's got a wonderful voice, though. I hear him singing to himself in the dressing room and I ask myself how he ended up in this town taking off his clothes for sex-deprived truckers. Other than that, he’s so quiet, the only time I’ve heard him talk is when he says ‘thank you’ while I give him the free drink for employees. And then bam, he’s gone for half a month! When he came back, I swear, the only kind of explanation I can think of is drugs. He starts making these terrible jokes, suddenly he’s talking real loud, maybe lost a bit of sanity. There’s something wrong, I know it.”

Oh, the vessel.

Dipper keeps nodding, his scowl getting worse. “Buddy,” he slurs, readying himself for the second shot glass, “you have no idea.”

And he brings it down the hatch; slick, liquid fire. He makes a gross sound after forcing a swallow.

“How about – “ Colby starts, “how about I replace the third with a beer?”

Dipper blinks a lot when he nods slowly.

Colby takes his shot glass and hastily pours him a beer from a keg. Dipper groggily thanks him.

“Sorry, mind if I leave for a moment? I’m being called from the inside.” He looks anxious just saying those words, “I’ll be back quick, man.”

It’s not surprising that Dipper thinks Bill might have something to do with that nervousness. He sips at the edge of his glass while Colby unsteadily disappears behind a door.

Oh, that whiskey settling in is _lovely._ He can’t feel his face. How long has it been since Colby left? He almost doesn’t see it when someone else goes to sit on the stool beside his. Dipper watches him from the side of his eye. It’s another man, about the same age the bartender was, already holding a drink of his own. Something layered white and pink with a lemon slice on the edge. It even had a little umbrella.

Dipper can’t help the tickled chuckle. Do clubs like this even offer drinks like that? Amazing.

The man is well-built, looked tall while sitting, and had a fairly attractive scruffy jawline. Ash-blond. Pretty eyes. It doesn’t take long for Dipper to realize he’s already staring, and he quickly looks back at his beer.

“Hey, saw you chuck down those shots,” the man beside him begins, “something wrong?” His voice is smooth, or is it just because Dipper feels drunkenness driving into his blood a lot faster? He raggedly looks back at the man.

“Things suck,” Dipper says, not seeming to care about the spontaneous appearance of the man, “I have an asshole trying to make things up to me by doing something so…so stupid,” he burbles, “I just wanna – wanna knock some sense into him. I mean, it’s such a fucking waste,” Dipper takes a swig from his glass, “he’s…so beautiful, like…I can’t describe it, and he goes and does shit like that?”

And on and on, in a similar manner. Dipper is on a roll, and he keeps going for about fifteen minutes, give or take. The man is listening very intently, watching the way Dipper moves his lips while he talks, how Dipper, every once in a while, looks off to the stage among people, as if to find someone.

“You’re not alone,” the man smiles, “sometimes people just suck.”

“No, no,” Dipper uttered, “this guy took the word ‘suck’ and thought he should be the meaning of it. Fucking dictionary definition. ‘Hello, is this Merriam Webster? Can I petition to change the meaning of the word ‘suck’ to Bill Cipher?’”

The man’s laugh is serene, kind. “That’s a weird name he has there,” he remarks with a dazzling grin. Dimples dot his face. Dipper grins back, but he swallows down the rest of his beer to hide it.

About a minute of silence, before someone’s talking again.

“I’m Eric, by the way,” the man finally introduces. His hand given to shake is hazy.

“Dipper,” he says, not trying to shake back when his hand numbs on the first try. Eric bites his lower lip and settles his hand away.

“Another weird name!” the man chirps, “but you, well.”

“Dude, are you,” Dipper slurs, “are you hitting on me?”

Eric’s tricky smile is small, timid. “Hmm.”

“You are,” Dipper yells, “Oh my god, you _are._ ” It’s the alcohol giving him a rush, but the man doesn’t seem to be offed. In fact, Dipper senses that Eric finds his talking more or less charming.

Eric hikes up a shoulder, the most adorable way Dipper has seen someone try to deny a claim. Something forceful and sweet kindles below his stomach, spreading up to his neck. Dipper hunches his shoulders, grinning.

“You got me,” Eric grins with a slight flail of arms, “so, uh, you wanna get out of here, maybe go somewhere else?”

“Sure,” Dipper agrees, “Let – let me…just,” he tries to stand, his arms gripping hard on the counter’s edge. He tries to kick his feet up. Tries.

Dipper can’t stand.

“You need help, Dipper?” Eric asks, but he’s already holding on Dipper’s waist, his fingers digging hard whilst his other hand goes to Dipper’s arm. In a snapping sense of horror, he realizes that Eric lifting him up is the only thing that makes him move.

To add to that horror, Dipper can tell, with deep hitches of his breath and a sinking, warm feeling all over, that he is on his way to an unwanted arousal.

The man put something, put _more than one_ thing in his drink.

Again, he tries to thrash, wiling his limbs to move, but he only manages a small nudge against Eric, who was now forcing him out of his seat and trying to get his arm around his shoulder.

“Bill,” the name is weak, so soft, that he doubts he even heard himself.

“Easy, Dipper,” Eric reassures, “You’ll forget Bill in the morning, and you’ll forget me.”

Eric is heaving him away from the bar. To everyone else, it might just be someone humbly getting their drunken friend out. He can’t scream no matter how hard he tries to work his voice, can’t fight against the man’s stiff build, like being stuck in a night terror. Regret spools in his gut. He should have followed what Bill said, should have ignored the man when he started talking, and for sure his name isn’t Eric. It’s just Eric for tonight.

Step by step, he’s being carried away.

Then he’s grabbed by the back of his collar and hauled to the floor.

It’s too fast; he’s plunged and skidded, his head hits the concrete wall so hard that he blacks out for a strange two seconds. When Dipper shifts into focus, his head skewered to the side, things begin to register – voices, loud and angry, the music abruptly stopped, and the lights paused in their constant flickering. A crowd of people begin to form in front of Dipper, and someone unknown has rushed to his aid, supporting him up, big hands are straightening his neck. Everything feels like it’s swimming and nice; he is definitely out of it.

He sees it while his head lolls, hears it like it’s coming from another room.

“You fucking crazy hooker!” shrills a fluctuating voice, the man who had put things in his drink. There’s someone holding him down, dressed in so much yellow. It’s familiar and distant.

There’s a blunt crunch, skin hitting forceful skin. The gasp from the crowd is not of surprise but a fair jeer.

“Bitch, you wanna see fucking crazy?" A sick crunch of flesh. Hitting, hitting. A pitiful wail. "Fucking tell me!" More hitting, kicks, punches, maybe a crack somewhere, cries of pain, _begs_ of pain, until whoever was doing the hitting seemed satisfied enough to have broken through his prey's face."And it’s ‘stripper’, you sack of shit. Get educated before you open your useless mouth!”

Eric is hauled from the counter and shoved to a big man, who curls his arm around his back. There’s a spitting of liquid.

Someone is coming to him, and there’s a faint back-and-forth from the person who helped him up and the man in yellow, who was at his knees in front of him. Now he recognizes, albeit in little steps, from the bow tie to the softly tousled hair. A shaking hand cups his cheek, he hears his name. Light, faint.

“It’s me,” the voice is loud and frantic, “It’s Bill, Pine Tree.”

Then Bill’s getting Dipper up to his feet and hauling him up his back. He smells of strong vanilla now that all other senses are weakened. He’s being carried up so easily, all the way out of the bar. More walking, maybe a block away before he’s slowly dropped. Unsteady hands grip on his own. Erratic Latin. Waking up.

He feels it again from in him, a deep and hot licking sense, woozy and feathery, making him shudder. He can’t think; his brain is crushed to particles and he’s flitting about.

The attic seems like a steam-blurred dream. The moment they arrive, Dipper immediately slumps back on his bed, torso first, whole body limp and ringing, and Bill is forcefully plunged down along with him, resulting in a mess of limbs.

By sole chance alone does this cause their mouths to fall messily on top of each other’s, warm and deep, together with a sharp poke of noses and a clacking of teeth, but Bill scrambles his upper body up and off, abruptly ending the accident just as it began, causing him to press down on Dipper’s palms, locking him in place. Bill sits on top of him, and with the way he seems to be vibrating, Bill doesn’t know the first thing to do.

His face is warm, he feels slickness on his suppled lips, how he can only see about a slit through his eyes, how he’s soft in the head and everywhere else. It doesn’t take much to recall it, the first stab of lust all those weeks ago, because now, it floods through him like wildfire.

Like a bang, the kiss comes again, calculated and desperate, deep and lost from gentleness. A strong mouth glides into his, lips crush and press and stammer over his own helpless ones, a tongue flicks over his gums, artful, dear, mad, and Dipper absolutely _loves_ it.

And fuck, it’s gone, because Bill completely pulls back, getting off of him and struggling to his feet, stepping away from the bed.

“I can’t,” Bill cries, “I can’t do this to you.”

He pauses, and this fleeting moment is a blur to Dipper.

“I – I don’t even know if you want it, no matter how much I want you, every inch of you, body and soul, I can’t have it like this.”

The only thing Dipper could do was tip his vision a little south, only to see Bill with his hands over his face.

As if in a flash, Bill makes his way back to him and begins pulling at his limbs, his shaky hands trying to get him to a decent lying position. He touches Dipper like the boy is made of burning coal, like he is poison and he can disintegrate Dipper with a brush of his fingers. The blue fleece blanket is shoved on top of Dipper, tucked quickly under his chin.

He goes in a vicious blank when Bill presses his palm over his eyes.

 

 

He wakes up that morning like his brain was washed in chlorine, blandly thumping in pain, and it takes him a few minutes to recall the general idea of what happened the night before. The pops of his bones as he stretches are oddly a lot more satisfying.

Tracing his thoughts is like trying to shoot a thick thread in a small needle. No matter how much he pushes and flips through his memories, he can’t remember anything past a funny, pinkish drink with a little umbrella on it. It’s the thing that stands out the most, among a jumble of phrases.

He does, however, recall being transported, recall Bill leaving him in the bar of a club to get his part of an agreement; alcohol. The agreement itself? It seeps into him in levels, and the more he tries to remember, the worse the situation gets in his head.

Dipper carries the thought all day, and he can’t stop himself from feeling like a big chunk of his memory was hacked off, deliberately.

Connecting the dots and thinking of possible conclusions is what Dipper does the whole day, tracing his fingers over the counter as he mutters to himself, suddenly pausing to stare at nothing while sweeping the gift shop floor.

Bill Cipher arrives the moment he finishes the summoning spell, like he’s been waiting to be called. Bill weirdly looks over him, troubled and concerned, out of character.

The demon is thick, but he’s not thick enough to not know he owes Dipper one hell of an explanation.

The way Dipper stares Bill down could have made generals piss themselves. It’s brave without trying, harsh without meaning to be.

“How are you, Pine Tree?” is the first thing that leaves Bill’s mouth. Not a drop of sarcasm laces it.

Dipper snorts, amused. “Oh great, look who’s finally decided to be a decent fucking living organism and ask how I am,” Dipper shoots back at him, “you know I’m not okay, Einstein.”

Bill steps closer, examining his face, body. His hands look very eager to start patting around.

“I know you’re not,” Bill treads, “but nevertheless, how are you?”

“I am a lot of clumsy things right now, Cipher,” he replies, “with the stunt you pulled yesterday night? Man, am I wondering what the fuck actually happened, because you know, I happen to _not_ remember how I got home?”

And Bill makes a move to touch his jaw, but Dipper flinches. The demon withdraws his hand.

“I don’t know,” Dipper says bitterly, “I drink two shots of whiskey then a beer, I don’t black out, suddenly I’m awake in my bed. Also, I didn’t watch you strip. Too bad, right?”

Bill grips at his cane tighter. “I brought you home. Don’t worry about that.”

“But don’t you know how fishy that sounds, Cipher?” he growls, “you know, it’s like I’m not remembering something? Maybe someone with, I dunno, _powers_ of some sort did a mental squeegee? I didn’t even wake up with a hangover. Two whiskeys aren’t enough to make someone pass out half-dead. Don’t lie to me.”

“Why are you so mad?” Bill grimaces, “I’m just trying to make sure you’re alright."

“You’re asking why _I’m_ mad?” Dipper cries, feeling all that pent-up anger cracking like a dropped vase, “You show me that Waddles is dead, say it doesn’t matter to you because death is the funniest damn joke to immortals, try to make up for it by stripping, and you‘re asking why I’m mad? Shut the _fuck_ up,” he jabs when Bill looks as if he’ll say something, “Do I look like I’m done? Last night you bring me to a club then I wake up with no recollection. There are so many things you could have done to me. When I’m being fucked over, I should at least know!”

Bill frowns. “It – it was a dumb tactic,” he weakly defends, “I didn’t mean it, saying it was a joke, I was stupid to say that.”

“Good thing you know,” he snaps.

“But I really just thought you’d want an answer, so I gave you an answer. You wanted to know where your pig was, so I showed you. I – I thought it would make you happy knowing, I only meant well."

“'You only meant well' my ass! Look how that worked out. I’m not any better, and I’m still fucking pissed at you.”

“I’m only trying to help you!”

“Fucking look at me. Does it look like you helped at all? I’m _worse_ because of you. The only kind of ‘help’ you’ve given me is when you acted like a slut, and that’s more than a month ago.”

Bill stares at him with this defeated expression, just stares and stares and stares. It's more frustrating by the second, how he should take this pretty face seriously, not just treat it as visual pleasantry. 

“Wanna know what happened last night?” Bill's tone is suddenly loud, "Convict thought it would be wonderful to drug you up."

"What did you say?"

“That's it, I'm gonna set him on fire, I'm gonna burn him until his bones are charcoal, dammit, he wanted to touch you! That jackass wanted to touch you and - "

"See what happens when you try to drag me into clubs just to watch you strip?" Dipper bit off the end of each word.

Bill was shot down from whatever high he was on. The way his face twists makes Dipper think he wasn't getting something important.

"I wasn't going to strip, you idiot."

Dipper snorts, unamused. "Really now."

Bill's half-smile falters. "My vessel sung in choir. Knows a ton of songs, he kinda had to for a while. Best voice for the next five towns over. Pine Tree, I was supposed to sing. Disco Girl by BABBA, isn’t that your favorite song?”

It is. Up to now, oh fuck, it is.

He was supposed to sing him his favorite song. Bill was supposed to sing him Disco Girl by BABBA, a song he’s wholeheartedly danced to while alone, a song he’s been made fun of for loving. Bill brought him to that club so he could sing Disco Girl for him.

Dipper feels like dunking himself in an ice bucket.

“Remember when I said you didn’t need to watch, just listen? Yeah,” he gulps, “but I don’t think you’ll be willing to listen now, considering you just…” and he makes this bursting motion with his hands, along with a comical _bshh,_ “I just wanted to make you happy, but no matter what I try, it always seems to get a garbage result.”

Dipper’s mind is hurtling, knitting together way too fast the realization of how _wrong_ he is, and god, it’s terrible, the way his gut twists on itself with a bad surge of nerves.

“I’ll stop clowning with your brain,” Bill offers, “but if you need me, I’ll answer to summoning. I’m always here if you want a fix.” He says ‘fix’ like it’s the one rubbish thing that he can do properly.

"Wait -"

“I _know,_ I’m terrible at helpin’ you,” he adjusts at his tailcoat, fixing up the bow tie, and his voice cracks in the middle when he grins, “Sometimes I ask myself why I even try.”

He snaps his fingers, and then he’s gone.

 

 

“How’s that copper bridge doing, Dipper?”

Dipper gingerly takes the Pitt cola that’s being handed to him, tipping the can open. “Threw it out,” he replies before sipping.

Stan dumps himself down the rickety orange couch so hard that Dipper is surprised the thing didn’t break in a heap. “Oh,” Stan muses, “why, kid?”

“I’m no engineer, it was too hard.”

It’s the first excuse that comes into his head. That’s the thing about lying; lie once, then you have to lie the whole way through. It just keeps branching out in a sequence until you hit rock bottom.

“I…I guess it was too complex, I think I picked out the wrong thing to build,” Dipper adds with a sigh.

He hates how he sees two possible meanings. He sinks lower into his seat, lips on the rim of his can.

“I see,” Stan says, “well, uh, mind if an old timer like me gives you a piece of advice? I mean, aside from keeping Legos at least ten feet away from your toes,” he says it with a smile so kind, Dipper oddly feels like he’s going to miss it when it’s gone.

“Shoot,” Dipper mumbles.

“First off, is your mind clear, Dipper? Is it as clear as it can get?”

Bill’s image again, standing in his room like he’d collapse if you brushed your fingers on him, trying his hardest to be understood, sears into his head. Like the little flashy nightmares he’d get of Mabel, even to this day.

“Not…not really, if you put it into perspective,” he answers softly.

Stan angles his body towards him, putting an elbow on the couch’s rest. “This question is kinda pointless, but knowing you, Dipper, you at least try to get your shit together even if it’s hard,” he begins, “but what’s bothering you, kid? In particular?”

Stan’s tone says it’s nothing about Mabel; of course, that’s been bothering him for four years, but Dipper knows in himself it’s different this time. Stan wouldn’t be asking about Mabel. Why would he? Stan is self-interested by default, not invasive. It’s an issue too long pressed into Dipper that it disintegrates as an actual problem.

And along with being bothered, he’s coped. It took a hell lot of coping, but it worked. Sure, he still has the scars, but the wounds are healed.

Dipper suddenly has the thought that he doesn’t want to know how his soul looks like.

“I know it ain’t my grandniece,” Stan treads, “something with how you still go to that thing you buried. Also, you denied the beer.”

Dipper shuts his eyes, deciding what angle he should come from.

 _The one where he’ll show you the least pity,_ his thought process replies. Dipper ignores it, though he does begin shrugging in his shoulders.

“So, I,” he speaks, “I…I might have done something I’m not so proud of. Not in an I-Killed-Someone way, no,” he grips the Pitt can tightly as he takes a long gulp, “Just….in a way, I made a really small but careless decision that happened to fuck up a lot of things,” he finishes.

“Hmm,” Stan pondered, “was it something you’ve said, kid?”

Dipper looks down at his shoes.

“You got into a fight with your mom on the phone?”

Dipper swallows. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“Doesn’t seem like you’ll be talking soon, huh?”

“Nope,” Dipper half-lies.

For a moment, Stan is really quiet, before he gets up and enters the shack’s back door again. He returns in about a minute, gripping something in his other hand.

“Palms up, kid."

Dipper spreads a hand on his lap, and Stan drops something on it, resulting in a little tinkle of metal. Glancing down on it, Dipper sees it’s a keychain of about five or six keys.

“The one with an S is the spare key to my car,” Stan announces, and when the word ‘car’ leaves his mouth, Dipper straightens up.

“Grunkle Stan, no thanks, it’s your car, I can’t drive it – “

“Kid, come on. It’s high time I do something for you. Feel free to use it when you need to, especially now,” he grins, “I hear Lookout Point is spectacular without all the gross teenagers.”

Dipper shakes his head, elated to his knees, “Stan – “

“You know how to drive, kid?”

“Yes, but – “

“Then you’ll need that clear head soon. Try driving tonight. It’ll help.”

And Stan pats him on the back, before turning away with another one of those soft grins. Dipper hesitantly grips the keys, finishes his cola, crushes the can, and gets back to raking the leaves.

 

 

There was nothing wrong about going to sleep; Bill still left the nightmares out, but Dipper doesn’t want to close his eyes, even with the assurance that it’s going to be pleasant. Two years ago, he would have slapped himself bloody. To sleep at night and not watch Mabel die? Why the hell would he pass the chance?

But sleeping doesn’t feel right, as of now. Instead, he lays awake, eyes staring wide at the keys on his bedside table, metal glinting like a star’s weak shine. A glance at the clock announces ten minutes after two.

Lookout Point. It’s about forty-five minutes from the Mystery Shack, if he follows road safety laws.

Dipper wants to make it in thirty.

He makes up his mind while shrugging on the dark blue turtleneck then lacing up his boots, still caked with the residue of mud from his travel to the forest. After grabbing the keys, he makes his way out as quietly as possible, expertly hopping over all the squeaky spots of the floor and skidding through the good ones, before leaving out the gift shop door; it’s the one with the new hinges.

Outside, it’s cold as fuck, and the wind blows moderately but brings a staggeringly low temperature with it, even during summer season. Dipper’s hands shake with the chill as he unlocks the driver’s door, sits, and closes it in a dull thud. His fingers continue to tremble as he turns on the ignition.

And there, just how loud the old engine gurgles makes an echo through the mountainous silence, and Dipper even hears the reverb within the car’s walls. He doesn’t stop himself from swearing in small bits as muscle memory works out the shifts and pedals, and he drives away from the shack’s property so fast, he probably woke up Grunkle Stan from the tire’s screeching against lightly damp ground.

He can’t explain the liberating feeling as he pulls away to the main road, knowing he’s going over speed limit without looking at the meter, the ecstatic thrill of a mere push on a foot pedal making the car swiftly speed past the dark, empty shops and buildings. No people walk on the roads, just streetlamps serenely lighting empty pavements, serving as the foreground of great mountains dotted back with a starry blanket of sky. Silently beautiful.

Going his way up, he mentally runs over the pieces of direction Stan had been hinting to him since giving him the keys. Turn left at the third ‘danger’ sign. Make sure you drive a rocky stretch for five minutes. Make a right on this tiny path. He doesn’t know why, but at this deep hour into the night, his brain functions like an odd computer, spitting out details as he asks for them.

The sign that Stan had run over back when he was twelve had been rebuilt when he passes by it, taking the uphill road ahead. It’s almost three in the morning. Once the road is flat, he drives faster.

Soon, he sees a sign lighted with miserable yellow fluorescent; Lookout Point, with an arrow that leads into a stretch of pine wood with a stripe of well-used road in the middle.

The trees begin to disappear eventually. Onwards, he sees an open clearing, and here, he eventually slows the car down.

It’s dark, not a streetlamp to brighten the flat cliff plane, and when he pulls up, the headlights shed a pale, blinding light unto an unexpected figure, and from where Dipper sits at the driver’s seat, this person is sitting right at the edge, fearlessly past the ropes and stumps, not appearing to hear the thrum of the engine, seeming unbothered by the sudden flood of light.

Instinct makes Dipper scream out, as he abruptly exits the driver’s seat, “Hey, get yourself the hell away from there!”

The slam of the car door shutting makes the man whip his head towards Dipper.

They recognize each other’s faces at roughly the same moment, Dipper slightly slowed down by processing the man’s features, but once it clicks, he feels his knees buckle underneath him.

Bill is not the Bill that Dipper was used to seeing. His face is wiped free of cosmetics from his nose to the gentle crevices of his neck. Instead of a tailcoat, he wears but a maroon plaid shirt over a thin, black inner one, the v-neck of it threading, and this inner shirt was so loose, it was probably borrowed from someone thrice his size. His jeans were decent enough if you didn’t stare; it was covered in patches of grass and dirt, like he’s been going to this place for days. His feet were bare.

And yet he was still beautiful in this simplicity. His face without adornment was remarkably young and lively, Dipper wouldn’t doubt it if he said he was sixteen. The boy could discern just how thick those lashes were, even from a distance. His eyes were deep, the straight arch of his nose resulted in a shadow, and Dipper could tell where his cheekbones were set.

Dipper has no words, and he can’t sift through the little speeches he’s prepared over the course of seventy-two hours, a perfectly timed mental block where for a searing moment, he’s convinced he’ll sputter out and say the dumbest things.

“Pine Tree,” Bill says over the engine, surprised, judging by how his first syllable skyrockets, “what are you doing here?”

Dipper could ask him the same thing. Dipper could be asking him a lot of things.

“What time is it? Shouldn’t you be taking some shut-eye, Pine Tree?”

His eyes flicking to the dashboard of the car states it’s a few minutes into three, but Dipper doesn’t give a fuck, because the entity who’s promised him happiness, who’s tried and tried and tried no matter how stubborn Dipper was, who only meant well in hopes Dipper could have four minutes of joy among four years of absolute fucking agony and he wrecks it in response, is now here.

Bill is here.

Dipper leans into the car to turn the engine off, stuffing the key into his pocket. The silence drowns over them once the revving of the car is gone, and the only thing that sheds them light is the moon, dim and shallow, while all Dipper sees are silhouettes.

“No,” Dipper says, “I’m not – I’m not going home until you do something for me.”

Bill scrambles up from sitting at the edge and enters into the ropes, walking closer to Dipper, about two feet from the car’s hood, and the boy can discern the soft shadows of Bill’s face.

“What is it?” Bill asks.

“Sing for me."

“What?”

“Sing for me, Bill.”

Bill doubtingly nods, but it doesn’t indicate he didn’t want to sing. It’s as if he’s afraid of messing up if he did. “What should I sing for you, Pine Tree?”

He remembers the song in a heartbeat. “Cecilia,” he says, “the last song my sister loved.”

Through the dimness, if he squints, he can see that Bill is looking at him, trying to get himself together from some sort of initial alarm.

“Of course,” he replies, “for your soul.”

And he starts singing, soft and gentle;  _Cecilia, you’re breaking my heart, you’re shaking my confidence daily._

Dipper could shed tears; it's that same tune in a charming voice, clear and cutting in this isolated place. Nothing has fascinated him more, being the only witness to this man singing, to hear once again this song being chanted out loud, piercing stillness, calling to somewhere, someone divine. It doesn’t take long for Dipper to join in, belting out the chorus with Bill, not a care in the world because _he can see her now._

He could feel himself smiling wide and hard, too overwhelmed, as Bill takes his hands through the darkness, grasping tightly. The song is almost done, just a few more lines to sing in tired tunes.

“Jubilation,” Bill sings in perfect progression, but the cracks are evident once more when the demon continues, “he loves me again.”

Bill doesn’t finish, because there are lips on his, and the resulting electricity is not murky but alive, for this time, it’s not a spur of lust, not a sense of distraction. It’s painfully real, and the hands Bill held are now holding at a side of his face, at the back of his neck. The kiss is trembling, lovely, sorrowful, and he dared not pull away from such beautiful wretchedness.

Their breaths mingle once again and Bill finds himself voiceless, unable to sing a note more.

“If you still want to fix me, then promise me you won’t do those things again.”

Bill only nods, feeling an ache where he had no heart. Yes, it all feels fucking wonderful right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hang on, things get so much better.


	4. Laura Ashley

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She doesn’t know, she didn’t see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This chapter takes a break from our usual angsty cryfest. I focus on character expansion here. Things get wrapped up.
> 
> I'd like to give my utmost gratitude to billdip-national-library from Tumblr for placing this fic among their list of "Tears Are Falling", an enumeration of sad fanfictions. This fic has been given the soundtrack "Gone Too Soon" by Simple Plan. I dare you to listen and not cry. Please, I recommend all of you to check out their blog if you have time, and if you have any fic suggestions it'll be cool to submit a few to them! 
> 
> (Wanna know more about Bill? Yeah, me too. Sadly, we only have two episodes of him.)

**Chapter 4**

It’s a feeling he can’t quite describe, sleepily blinking himself awake from the driver’s seat. The air is chillier, the sky a gloomy white in this early hour of morning. He knows he’s not fully conscious; it’s that deep, floating state of waking up before the alarm, when half his brain hangs onto nescience. No doubt, it feels like a dream when he gazes off to the passenger’s seat and sees a young man curled up with his knees to his chest, head tilted to his shoulder whilst his hair splays flat on the window, almost like a child in his sleep. From where Dipper sits, the other’s lashes dust over streaked cheeks, the dried lines of lapsed tears going all the way down his neck.

 _Oh_ , Dipper thinks, _this can’t be a dream any longer._

But sleep beckons him in a stronger wave, and he sinks again to pleasant darkness, remembering a vague song, the petal-like feel of another’s lips, a soft hand on his cheek.

 

 

“Look alive, sunshine!” Greets a cheery tone at his shoulder.

Dipper begrudgingly groans, unwilling to open his heavy eyelids that seemed to have glued themselves shut. The inside of his eyes are a burning red no matter how he squeezes them, indicating it was bright outside. A stubborn hand shakes his arm. Ignoring it doesn’t help, and he’s soon awake, annoyed.

Though it’s hard to remain bothered when it’s a face like that he sees first thing in the morning. He vigorously rubs at his eyes.

“What time is it?” He mutters, stretching his arms forward. There’s a rustle of limbs; Bill climbing back to his seat before hiking his bare feet up the dashboard.

“A wondrous morning to you, too.” Bill chirps. “If you could still call this ‘morning’. Clock blinkin’ 12:45, kid.”

“What?” He yells, suddenly awake. “Shit, I only meant to sleep a few hours.”

Bill chuckles, honking and nasal. “Nah, made sure you made up for the sleep you lost. Eight hours’ the charm.”

Dipper shakes his head. “No, you don’t understand, Grunkle Stan’s probably looking for me." He digs into the pockets of his coat for the keys. Fumbling about, he fishes them in between fingers and hurriedly sorts apart the one marked with an S, jamming it into the ignition.

“Woah, kid,” Bill sits up straight, “you’re nineteen. Surely the old geezer won’t mind you coming home a wee bit late.”

He turns to Bill, incredulous. The demon cheerily grins back at him with that wide, slightly off-color smile.

“What are you playing at?”

Bill shrugs, shoulders almost meeting ears. “Oh, come on. This one has exactly zero strip clubs involved. I’m in need of company, that’s all.”

Dipper leans back. “Hey, to be frank, we’re still not all right – “

“Yeah, we aren’t all right, as you say it. Just give us some time. I’ll continue my plan, I’ll make it up to you, but for now, spend one day with me.”

Dipper stares at him, still doubting. It’ll be stupid to deny such simple request when he spent the hours before sunrise belting out his twin sister’s last favorite song with him. It’s one of those things he can’t simply pretend had never happened. His chest swells a little, remembering what ensued after.

The boy all at once breaks into a brief laugh. Damn that giddy feeling.

“Just one day,” Dipper repeats. Bill, oddly, gives him a salute.

“All I’m after, kid.”

“So,” Dipper flips on the ignition, “where to?”

Bill eases back into his seat, crossing his feet at the ankles. “A diner. I’m _famished._ ”

“You’re gonna eat?”

“Nope. We’re gonna eat, silly.”

He makes a turn, going back into that long stretch of trees, out of the clearing. Now that food was mentioned, he did feel a little bit hungry. “If you say so.”

The drive to Greasy’s Diner is more or less silent. Bill had rolled down the window once they got down to the town proper, seeming to watch everything they drove by with a focused curiosity. His head would follow a man walking his dog, an old couple entering a flower shop, a group of young teenagers sitting at a curb outside an ice cream parlour. Sometimes, he’ll poke his head out along with about half his torso and suddenly yell at things, even people, and Dipper would have to pull him back inside the car by the end of his maroon plaid, whereas Bill would shoot him a grumpy look, all narrowed eyes and pursed lips. It’s funny every time.

Greasy’s is moderately filled with its usual set of customers. Dipper even knew some of them. He has Bill loitering behind him, eyes straying everywhere, oftentimes pulling at Dipper’s sharp hold. Once he found an empty table, he has to tug and glare at Bill to make him sit still. On the table’s surface, he’s still gripping at Bill’s wrist.

He only lets go when Bill flicks his eyes to it with a playful wiggle of eyebrows, and just in time, because Lazy Susan is making her way toward them, a little pad in her hands, her fingernails painted teal. Dipper thinks it lingers in her memory how the last time he was here, he had completely ignored her and Stan ordered for him instead, because she politely angles herself toward Bill and sprightly asks, “Your order, lad?”

“You got cherry pie, madam?” The grin on his face is both stunning and suave.

Susan takes delight in this address, as she noticeably loosens up, expression a lot more casual. “Of course we do.”

“Then I’ll have a slice of that.” Bill sings. “Also, get this guy his stack o’ pancakes, wouldja, madam? Chocolate syrup, hold the butter.”

“That’d be all for you?” She asks, making scribbles on her pad.

“Coffee.” Dipper sharply mutters. It’s addressed to Bill, who nods.

“Coffee for him, and the sugariest milkshake you have for me.” Bill tells her. She asks if that’s all again, he assures her that it is, and she walks away.

“Madam? Really?” Dipper remarks once Susan is out of earshot. The demon taps his fingers on the edge of the table and slouches in the grimy, yellow plush seat.

“To be fair, she called me ‘lad’. If only she knew I’m millenniums older than her. Gotta blend in, okay?”

Dipper huffs, rolling his eyes as he slumps on the table.

“The woman gets you, you know.” He says minutes after. Dipper briefly glances at him and looks away, toward the window. People walk on the side road; a father with his daughter, a young man biking, children eating popsicles. It’s a stiff image to Dipper, watching other people’s lives, because he knows they’re so different from his.

“I was rude.” Dipper mumbles.

“I read her mind, Pine Tree.”

Dipper continues to stare at the window, people blurring and glass pane focusing instead.

“I think Stan Pines told her your situation when you weren’t lookin’. She’s not, well, not really negative about you. Don’t sweat it.”

Dipper raises his eyes somewhere toward the counter, where Susan was taking out a mug, something that says _U Da Best,_ and putting it on their tray. He can’t look at her longer than a few seconds.

Nice people. It blows Dipper away every time. He allows himself to grin, tight-lipped and unnoticeable, but what the hell.

Their order comes. Bill calls Susan by ‘madam’ again, ecstatic about his plate of pie and the milkshake with about three scoops of ice cream on it. His swirly straw is lined red and white. Dipper tries to catch Susan’s eye but he’s too nervous, and when she walks away once more, he’s left to stare at her back of big, gray hair.

Shoulders falling, he takes his fork, about to puncture into his pancakes, when he notices something just on the elevated lip of the plate.

It’s a smiley face, drawn with chocolate syrup.

Fucking nice people. Dipper grabs his coffee mug and drinks about half of it, used to the scalding temperature.

“Aw, ain’t she a sweetheart,” Bill comments, chewing down his first bite of cherry pie. Dipper watches him curiously.

“Do you need to eat, or is this an additional activity you can do?”

“I need to eat,” Bill replies, gulping. “I also need to sleep. And everything else. Urinate. Bowel movements. It’s all very tiring. Breathing, however, that’s optional. My energy supplies most of what oxygen fulfills. For a bunch of dumb, crying, confused, meaningless wet bags of flesh, you need lots of maintenance.”

 _That’s true_ , he silently agrees. “And if you don’t do those?”

Bill digs his fork into his pie. “I’ll be forced to evacuate the vessel. Remember your little sock play?”

It’s not the most pleasant of memories, but not entirely bad, either. Trying to guess the password to that beaten-up laptop for nights in a row. Sleep and food deprivation along with dehydration. Eating his shirt.

But Mabel was awesome. That’s what counted at the end of the day.

“Can a vessel exist without a soul?” Dipper finds himself asking. Bill points his fork at him, making circles with it.

“Technically, yes. A vessel without a soul is still a body capable of thinking and functioning. It can survive, I’ve seen a few cases where soullessness actually makes them rely more on their head than emotions, but humans without souls. Yeesh.” To Dipper’s surprise, Bill cringes as he wipes his mouth with his sleeve. “It’s a nightmare. They’re simultaneously fascinating and oddly… foul? Even I think it’s unnatural, with that primarily instinctual drive they have goin’. Hey, eat your food, kid.”

Bill is a few more bites to finishing. Dipper hasn’t begun. Quickly, the boy starts eating the first pancake, careful not to strike the smiley face.

“Oh man, oh man,” Bill suddenly bibbles, “I swear, this guy friggin’ _adores_ cherries. He’s got like eight jars of Maraschino. Jam, jelly, pruned, dried. If ever you got a cherry taste when we kissed, blame this dude. I’m getting his preferences.” And his hand shot up the air. Seconds later, Susan approaches with her friendly disposition and little pad. Bill orders another slice, sipping his milkshake. Dipper has his coffee refilled.

A mascara-enhanced eye briefly flickers toward him as Susan tips more coffee into his mug. Dipper freezes flat in his seat, before mustering up enough courage to flash her an awkward smile.

Susan is astonished, it seems, but it doesn’t take her long to smile back. She stops pouring when the coffee is practically pouring off the rim of the mug.

“How are you, chap?” She gently asks.

“I-I’m okay.”

Susan nods. He gets that warm vibe of a grandmother, a rare, pleasant thing he’s not used to. Dipper sips at his coffee while she turns and walks off.

Looking back at Bill, he takes note of how the demon holds his fork in a fist, devouring his second slice. A little bit of cherry smudges on his under lip and goes unnoticed.

Dipper puts down his mug. Somehow, watching Bill’s bare feet tapping under the table reminds him of a little girl who’s spent the day playing shoeless on the grass, probably pretending to be a fairy.

“Kid, you got any idea where the restroom is?”

He snaps his attention back at Bill. His milkshake is good as gone, plate only left with crumbs.

“Follow me,” he beckons, standing up. Bill trails on beside him. Once they get in, and they’re the only ones inside, the eerie coat of silence envelopes them, and Bill is at once amazed to see his reflection in the mirrors. He stands, hands on the edge of the tiled counter, staring wide-eyed at the vessel’s profile.

“Mirrors are fantastic.” He comments, running a hand through his tousled, gold-blond hair. A heavy, waving lock falls to the right of his face. Bill puffs a breath at it. “You’re one of the few dimensions who got to discover light reflection resulting in an image. Sometimes I forget why some of you are so vain.”

Dipper looks away. He can’t even stand his own reflection of tired eyes and strange, willowy stature; it had clashed with a masculine build, like a taller version of his twelve-year-old body. He was all joints and corners. Whatever inkling of charm he once had the chance of maturing into was indented. He could have been handsome, were it not have looked as if the weight of the world has left its peril on his features. If only he had not forgotten the beauty of a true smile.

There’s a rustle of clothes. Looking up, Bill is shrugging off that hideous maroon plaid and dropping it on an empty sink. He then hikes himself up the counter, sitting right on top of it, circling, then puts his feet inside the next sink with a thud. A hand twists at the tap. Bill begins washing his feet.

“How did you lose your shoes again?”

“Extreme distaste.” The demon answers, putting out one wet foot and beginning to dry it off with the plaid shirt, “The dirt on my feet is literally better than having to wear those atrocities.” He begins with the other one, turning off the running water with his toes. When he’s done, he begins dusting away at patches of dirt on his jeans. Dipper watches quietly, leaning on the wall.

Bill soon hops off, tying the shirt around his waist. “Good to go."

“You know you’re going to soil your feet again.”

“Yeah, but if you know what kind of shoes I’ve had to wear, you’d practically pity me.”

Back at the table, their bill waits. As Dipper digs inside his coat for money, the demon stops him by holding up a hand and putting thirty on the table. It’s entirely composed of one dollar bills.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Wow! I offered you a hundred thousand dollars, gave you twelve million in gold bars, which you refused, and you’re wondering why I have thirty bucks?”

Dipper rolls his eyes. “Big tip, huh.”

“Madam Ptosis deserves it.” He says with a wave of his hand.

Dipper hums. “Not gonna say you’re wrong.”

The car is parked on an empty side pavement. It has gotten warmer, and the car’s stuffy interior bursts at Dipper’s face when he opens the driver’s door. He unzips at his coat while Bill skips into the passenger’s seat.

“Speaking of shoes,” Bill begins after shutting the door, “I’m in need of some assistance. It’s why I asked you to come with me today.”

“Go on,” Dipper sighs, starting the car. Thankfully, the A/C decided to be friendly today and works half-decently.

“I’ll have to improve this guy’s collection of clothes. I mean, have you _seen_ his closet?” He huffs out impatiently. “Obviously you didn’t, but if you did, you’d cry an ocean. For a stripper, he’s neutered. Everything is about three sizes too loose. He owns nothing brighter than muted brown. The shoes were so hideous I’d rather walk on glass shards than wear them.” The demon’s tone gets significantly more frantic with each sentence.

“Seems like a huge problem.”

Bill doesn’t catch his sarcasm. “Tell me about it!” He fumes. The way his arms wave about leaves an impression of a trial lawyer. “Like, I’m Bill Cipher, for crying out loud. At least I should get decent clothing.”

Dipper absorbs the rant with piqued interest. Bill Cipher having a fashion crisis. He should have expected it, with his triangular form bearing a bow tie, hat and cane. Of course he’ll be looking for some sort of class. As of now, detaching Bill from his sightly vessel, it was a disappointingly different take from seeing him in his tailcoat.

“And what exactly do you plan to do?”

“I’ve got my banknotes. Just bring me to a mall, wouldja?”

Dipper can’t help himself; he snorts, a failed attempt at keeping in his laugh. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, I am.” Bill replies all too earnestly. “Or do you guys still hand-stich everything?”

“But you’re not _actually_ shopping. That’s the first thing on the list of things I can’t see you doing. Maybe getting a suit fitted. But shopping?”

He could, but the mental image was so out of place it just registers as peculiar, an idea that he shouldn’t be allowed to ponder. Bill sorting through shirts. Going in and out of fitting rooms. Even him standing in line at the cashier is so hilariously human that picturing a demon the likes of Bill doing them is like breaking an invisible, universal law. You show the Queen of England respect. You don’t imagine Bill Cipher shopping in a mall.

Bill just shrugs a shoulder, smirking. “Y’know what they say about me. Liar, monster, snappy dresser. Look at me. Don’t I look awful?”

Dipper steals a quick glance at him, though he already knows what he’ll see. “I think you already look pretty good.”

A beat of silence.

“Say that again, Pine Tree?”

Dipper almost hits a pedestrian. “Shut up.”

 

 

The thing about Bill is that he’s like a five-year-old stuck in a showstar’s adult body. They’ve been in the department store for less than twenty seconds and Bill has pointed and excitedly spoke out at things about fifty times. Dipper had barely grabbed a basket when Bill took him by the wrist and brought him to a row of scarves, grabbing one he thought he would like, fluffing it out, then putting it back with a displeased wrinkle of a nose.

And goodness, Bill can break into a sprint. He’s two sections away from Dipper in a matter of minutes, and when the boy finds him among men’s clothing, Bill is holding six collared shirts; three whites, a yellow, two blacks. Once dumped in the basket, Dipper checks the price tags and regrets it, because he gets a little heart attack and shoves them back in the shirts.

To top it off, Bill has a habit of grabbing items that catch his fancy right off the shelves and inspecting them with harsh hands before putting them back carelessly. Dipper has received a lot of rude looks from service staff.

Despite the demon’s childish tendencies, he has a particularly swishy, _au courant_ taste. Everything that Bill picks out is expensive, from the cloth to the well-sewed seams, and they’re either a bright yellow, black, white, or a mixture. A shirt with a black damask pattern stands out, along with a shimmering, gold blazer. A sleeve of a snow-white cashmere sweater hangs from the basket’s side, there goes a flashy houndstooth suit jacket. Each piece is sharp, voguish; he can sense that little pulse of personality, in a way that screams _get the hell out of the way, you’re on my red carpet._

About an hour passes, and Bill is still as ecstatic as he was the moment he stepped into the department store. He’s dragging Dipper again by the wrist, talking loudly about the invention of the sewing machine, his thoughts about ties, the Industrial Revolution’s textile manufacturing, while on their way to the shoes section. Dipper collapses on a seating bench while Bill scans on leather shoes. An employee catches sight of Bill’s bare feet and is instantly perplexed. The boy, despite being drained and worn, inwardly smiles.

It’s a lot shorter of a wait. Bill is back with three shoeboxes in another basket. Once given to him, he doesn’t want to check the prices any longer; he stopped counting at three hundred.

“How did you convince them to let you fit?” Dipper asks. They’re making their way to a cashier.

“Hey, I’m not _that_ limited. I have my ways.”

The line is short, as expected from a weekday. Just a handful more minutes, and Dipper could go home. The more he thinks about what Stan might be feeling about him not coming back to the shack as early as possible, the heavier that rock settles in his gut. He just hopes Stan isn’t that worried; he’s over sixty, after all.

The person in the front of the line appears to be having problems with some sort of gift card. Dipper looks about, expecting to see Bill fumbling with a turning chocolate bar display. He doesn’t. Bill is nowhere.

Groaning, he steps out of line and walks back into the rows and rows of clothing, craning his neck for a head of gold hair. He’s searched about half of the whole store when he finally catches sight of that hideous maroon plaid in the women’s shoes section. Annoyed, he hurriedly approaches Bill, who was gazing at a four-inch heel he was cradling in his hands.

“Bill, what the hell?” Dipper snaps, putting a stiff hand on the demon’s shoulder and slightly pushing to face him. “You have to tell me before you run off somewhere, I almost lost you – “

“How do you think they manage to walk on these sticks?” Bill ponders.

Dipper sighs, setting his lips on a flat line. “Obviously, I wouldn’t know.”

Bill runs a thumb down the thin, suede heel. “He owns a few pairs of these.” His voice is no louder than a mutter. “But he doesn’t keep them in his place. Leaves them in the dressing room, for some reason.”

“Just – just put it back.” Dipper bit out, snatching the heel from him and placing it back on the shelf. Bill gives him a nasty look.

“Hello, kid? Genderless over here?” Bill argues. He makes a big show of going on his tip toes and grabbing a black pump from the top shelf. This one had an ankle strap. “It used to be the higher the heel, the more powerful you were!” He waves it at Dipper’s face, and the boy leans back, wary about a pointy heel possibly striking his nose. “Your modern gender roles are limiting and confusing anyway. I want it, and I’m sure as heck gonna get it.”

And Bill solidly puts it on top of the shoeboxes. Dipper rolls his eyes.

“It’s not that you _can’t_ wear them, it’s just that I need to be back at the shack as soon as possible. If you wanna pick out a pink stiletto, I don’t care, go nuts, man. But make it quick.”

Bill doesn’t respond. He just huffs with a single nod, turns his back, and keeps scouring for more shoes. The last of what Dipper sees is the demon searching among the ankle boots before he lets his palm settle on his face, closing his eyes.

He has never been alone shopping with someone else before. Their parents never left them alone in the bigger malls back in their hometown, and if ever Mabel and him had the chance of going to a store for clothes, their mother was always with them. He’ll never forget how his sister was fond of bright colors, big skirts, anything with feathers or swirls of cotton on them. Sneakers were her thing, high-cuts folded down to show the inner lining, along with switching the shoelace to some neon color. She didn’t care if it was silly or outlandish; when she wore it, she owned it.

 He glances down at the baskets, meeting a slight shimmer from the gold blazer and the daring, sharp heel of the black pump. If Mabel were here, they’d probably get along.

His little soliloquy is interrupted by a voice at his elbow.

“Dipper Pines?”

He recognizes the voice like a zap to his spine. With a sudden twist of his gut, he jerks his head around to see the owner of the voice; a postured, young lady, dressed in a swathing floral skirt and a crisp, white top, a thin chain of silver around her neck and clinching slightly on her graceful collarbones. Her notable pair of extravagant diamond earrings twinkle behind volumed curtains of white-blond hair. She stands tall, taller than Dipper, but it may be because of the sandal wedges. A dainty, manicured hand grips at the strap of a dark brown buckle satchel. He hasn’t seen her since the party at her mansion, which felt more than seven years ago, and he has to adjust from the gown-wearing little girl to what he sees with his eyes right this moment.

Sophisticated, maquillaged, snobbish.

“Northwest.” Dipper greets after a stiff silence.

“What are you doing here, of all places?”

Dipper scowls at her. “Unless you own this place, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t matter if I accompanied a child-brained person to picking out clothes.”

Her face breaks into a sly grin, complete with a raised, penciled brow. “That’s a pretty harsh description, even for you.” And she looks about, down at the baskets Dipper holds. The way her expression changes is hilarious.

“Got someone, huh?” Pacifica snickers, and Dipper catches the slight shake of her head. “A guy like _you?_  Oh, my.”

“Shut your mouth.”

“Just trying to make conversation, duh. I didn’t know you still came here for the summer.”

“My life isn’t your soap opera.”

“What a killjoy you are,” she smiles. “What? You got into a quarrel with your girl? Shucks, I feel bad for you."

Dipper tries to seem unaffected. His eyes betray him, however, because he unconsciously strays his vision over to Bill, who had his back turned, attention hooked on that line of ankle boots. Pacifica seems to have followed his line of sight, since she abruptly puts a hand over her mouth with a soft gasp.

“Okay,” she speaks, “okay, from here, I can tell she’s pretty.”

Dipper feels it necessary to drop the bomb. “He’s not a girl, stupid.”

“I’m not buying it,” Pacifica replies, crossing her arms over her chest.

Dipper sneers. “Really?”

“Bet on it.”

“Then I’m a rich man tomorrow,” the boy says. Pacifica lifts her chin before huffing, a sign that the subject is done.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

“We’re not friends.”

A little disheartened, Pacifica says, “Really now, Dipper? You sure about that?” And she gently nudges Dipper’s forearm with her fist. “That favorite rug pattern of my parents? It broke their hearts, having to throw that mud-stained thing out.”

It takes a while, but Dipper remembers. His morsel of initial hatred softens. “Right, we’re probably friends, but –"

A quick pattering of feet interrupts him, and soon enough, Bill is at his side, bringing a gold ankle boot, it’s heel about three inches high and as thick as his thumb, sewn at the soles like an office shoe, no straps to hold it but laces. He takes the black pump in his other hand.

“I’ll have to take the pairs, I’ll be finished in two shakes, kid.”

When Dipper looks back at Pacifica, he has no clue if the astonished expression is because of the gold ankle boot, realizing the ‘girlfriend’ she has named is biological male in appearance from the front, or because this biological male picked out a gold ankle boot.

“Told you he’s not a girl.”

“Oh god,” Pacifica gulps.

“God is an illusion, lady!” Bill tells her with a dazzling smile. Pacifica continues to eyeball him.

Dipper uncomfortably looks between them. “Bill,” he slowly begins, tone unsure, “this is Pacifica.”

Bill’s face brightens. “I’d smell a Northwest anywhere! Yep, I know about ya’ll, you got a banner with me hanging ‘round your – “

“Stop talking, go and get your pairs.”

“Bill,” Pacifica suddenly calls, unable to keep an unknown, sugary excitement, “would you mind helping me pick out a pair of shoes? I have a feeling you’ll be of great assistance, honey.”

Bill doesn’t bat an eyelash. “Fantastic! What’s the occasion, Northwest? Enslaving a rhetorical system? Making masses bow down at your feet, chanting your name in praise?”

Pacifica already eases into friendly, because she goes and stands beside Bill, putting a hand on his shoulder. “You could say that.”

“Pine Tree, I like this human!” The demon remarks. “She’s got good taste!"

“Jeez, stop flirting, I’m right here.”

“I was not flirting!” Dipper yells at her.

“Number one evidence of flirting; weird nicknames. He called you ‘Pine Tree’.”

“Ugh,” Dipper sighs. Bill begins walking, Pacifica just shakes her head at whatever their exchange was about.

“So, boots or pumps? Red or black?” She asks, elated.

Bill laughs, giving Dipper a thrilled look. “Oh boy.”

Dipper rolls his eyes, following a few feet behind them, carrying Bill’s two baskets, and he’d be lying if he said his lips didn’t twitch into a smile.

 

 

The hours that pass seems like a blur to Dipper. After shoes, Pacifica looked for a dress, a rose-scented perfume, and lastly, a particular red-purple color for lipstick. It’s amazing how those two got along so quick; Bill blends into her well, probably because of their same sharp temperament.

Dipper doesn’t know he fears it until they’re at a cashier again, heaving up Bill’s two baskets of clothing up the counter. He grows worried with each item scanned; they’re the kinds of clothes his parents would never let him buy because of the outrageous price. Bill probably didn’t glance at a single price tag when he picked out those clothes. There goes the gold blazer, suit jackets and several collared dress shirts of thick, silkish cloth. The cashier herself is astounded as she scans a number of cufflinks. A whole mound begins to form at the end of the counter.

Shoes come last, and with the scanning of the last box, Dipper gathers the balls to look at the amount due. He gawks, breath hitching sharply.

Over two thousand dollars.

“Jesus Christ,” he says it before he can stop himself, glancing at Pacifica. The look on her face is nothing short of impressed. Oh hell, of course she’d be used to seeing such an amount when shopping, maybe even more.

The cashier is also nervous, judging by how her fingers are unsteady on the machine’s buttons. Anyone would be timid to charge that into someone’s credit card.

But Bill is calm as ever, and he just rustles in his jean’s pockets and casually pulls out a thick wad of cash, about an inch thick and folded in the center, bills fresh out of the bank. The thin strip of paper that holds it together is scribbled with _$ 3 000._ They appear to be in hundreds. Bill hands this to the cashier, who looked ready to faint, paler than white.

“Just get what ya need.” He says. Trembling hands begin counting dollars, one hundred, two hundred, three hundred, so on.

Pacifica clears her throat. “He’s a relative,” she adds, hoping it would clear up the situation, but the cashier just starts counting faster, fearing the money she holds in her hands more, now that she’s told it belonged to someone from the Northwest bloodline. Dipper feels sorry for her.

It takes a while for Bill’s transaction to finish. The result is two giant plastic bags of clothing and shoes. Bill carries them off the end of the counter as Pacifica has her items scanned. She pays with a debit card.

Dipper feels poking at his shoulder. “Y’know, I almost brought a bar of gold, until I remembered you humans don’t do barter anymore.”

Pacifica joins them moments later. It’s a silent synergy, how she's allowed to walk beside Bill.

The underground parking lot is darker than Dipper remembers it, and when he checks Pacifica’s crystal-adorned silver watch, it’s six thirty in the evening. Bill requests for the car keys, Dipper hands it to him and he watches him dash to the car, leaving him and Pacifica in an awkward moment of silence as they walk behind Bill.

“Don’t you have your own car, or are you going to ask for a ride?”

“You’re asking me if I don’t have my own car? Really?” She motions her thumb at a sleek, black McLaren on the next line of parking spaces from where they currently stand. “Your convertible can do with a little repairs, am I right?”

“Okay, I get it, you’re rich, you have a luxury car, and you’re sometimes bitchy,” Dipper drawls on. Despite the hint of an insult, Pacifica chuckles.

“Hey, you keep that guy of yours, you hear me?” She advises, nudging Dipper with a brush of her shoulder, and the boy catches a slight whiff of her smell, something he can’t pinpoint, deep and full. “Sure, he’s oddly blunt and seems like a kid, but I can sense he’s got direction.”

Dipper can’t do the right expression with his face. “You’ve met him for maybe three hours, dude.”

Pacifica’s pink-glossed lips curl into her usual sly smirk. “Doesn’t mean I can’t see stuff. Also, where’d you get him? He’s, like, the kind of handsome that you just,” she makes this urgent flailing of a hand, “you can’t really believe resulted from actual genes? It’s alarming, to be honest. I can’t look at him for more than a few seconds in close range.”

Dipper looks off to the car, finding Bill sitting shotgun, taking out a shoebox.

“Same here,” he confesses. Pacifica laughs again.

“Oh!” She suddenly says. “I’m guessing Mabel isn’t with you? I was keeping an eye out for her the whole time we were in there, but it looks like she’s not around.”

And here is a reality he will never get used to; the painful knowledge that for some people, in their lives, in their heads, Mabel still exists.

For Pacifica, Mabel still exists. Mabel _lives._

That is something he will never know again, and if he had the chance for the idea of Mabel passing away to never meet his consciousness, if his parents kept it away from him, if he did not ask to look under the sheet, then he'd be so much more happier now. Ignorance is bliss.

“Mabel hasn’t been with me for a long time.”

Pacifica focuses a lot more on him. “What do you mean?”

In a tic from a coping mechanic, he puffs out a short, broken laugh. He’s done this so many times that maybe, this time, it’ll be funny. Why are all of them asking if Mabel is alive? Have they been living under a rock for four years?

“She’s gone, Pacifica.”

“Gone? Gone how?”

Dipper answers her with a smile.

She’s processing it, he knows by that familiar, horrid look. He’s seen it a hundred times over, with old friends and relatives. A wretched frown, that nauseous forward lean, distressed eyes. Slowly, she puts a hand to the side of her face, sliding it over her mouth, squeezing her eyes shut, gripping her own jaw.

“When?” She croaks. Dipper hears the lump in her throat.

“Four years ago.” He looks down at his feet. “Nobody ever told you?” The girl shakes her head, blond hair waving about.

“God,” She hisses. “Ugh, goddammit. I can’t believe this.” Her eyes flicker up to Dipper. They’re tinted red, a line of tears swell above her under lids. “Oh my god, it’s – it’s too early, fifteen is way too damn early. This is so _weird_. I was expecting her to just come out of a clothing rack and scream something childish, you know? Well, she can't." Pacifica bit her lip. "She hated me, didn't she?"

Seeing Pacifica now, her true walls tumbling down like his did, is somehow comforting. Not that he wished her pain. It’s a comfort knowing he’s not alone in that little space of loss.

“Not at all. I think she would have been ecstatic to have you as a friend, like Candy or Grenda. If only you weren’t so stuck up,” he said the last part as lightheartedly as he could, hoping it passes off as a joke. It takes Pacifica a handful of moments to get it, however.

“You think so?”

“Definitely.”

She sucks in a breath, exhaling in a huff. “Is my mascara rolling down my face?”

Dipper looks at her. “Maybe a little.”

“Gosh, you’re a dick,” she says with a flip of her hair, getting it out of her eyes.

“Hey, look who’s talking.”

A loud voice suddenly calls out, echoing through the parking lot. “Pine Tree! We gonna go or what?”

“That’s your cue,” Pacifica says, stepping away, “like what I said, keep him. Trust me, it’s going to be okay, Dipper.”

She grips his forearm one last time, before turning her back. Dipper watches her leave, hearing the dull sound of her wedges bumping against the pavement. She gets in the driver’s seat and gives Dipper a final wave through the window before the headlights flash bright and he can’t see her anymore. He walks back to Stan’s car while her McLaren drives off behind him.

He gets in the driver’s seat, and as he shuts the door, he looks at Bill, and almost believes her.

 

 

“Where are you going to put all your stuff?” Dipper asks as they pull unto the main road.

“In his apartment. Honestly, this guy should be thanking me. I’m saving him from disastrous clothing.”

Silence, short and swelling. Bill looks out the window, watching lights blear by from convenience stores and streetlamps.

“So, you’re sleeping there tonight.” It wasn't a question. It was a statement.

“I am,” Bill mumbles, “I sleep there every night. Why'd you bring it up?”

“Nothing, it’s just,” he shrugs, “if you’re sleeping there, you gotta, y’know, give me directions.”

Bill continues to look out the window.

“Of course.” He whispers.

 

 

The vessel’s apartment is located somewhere obscure, at the first turn from a main road, a baby blue, five-story building that would look more decent if some spots where rain had created gloomy dripping was repainted. Third floor, first room to the left, Bill had said.

“You could have just teleported.” Says Dipper, stopping the car in front of the single barred door leading to a stairwell.

“Oh, dear. I’d rather be stuck to the seat of this strange, locomotive engine with you.”

It’s a nice minute of curiosity, where he imagines what Bill does when he hasn’t been visiting him. Who knows, maybe the vessel is asleep most of the time, because Bill would rather be in the mindscape, doing whatever. To Dipper, this revelation of the demon living in a dwelling place brings an oil well of things Dipper does not know, asking more questions than answering. He guesses, maybe that’s what Bill is really about; something that he will never completely understand.

Oh, yes. He doesn’t get it, either, the plan, the ‘fixing him’ charade. What is Dipper, aside from a soul broken beyond numb from misery?

“Pine Tree.”

It’s dark again, and Dipper can only see the angles of Bill’s face illuminated with a soft orange of a streetlamp.

“Give me a few days. Just a few days.”

In darkness, he can stare as much as he wants to. It’s easy; he can’t quite see his striking face, just the rustle of blond strands reflected off and shadowed. A nice thought, it is, to know he is looking at beauty in its cage.

Bill hikes his feet up the seat, kneeling toward him and leaning closer. A hand touches him, fingers pressing on his cheek, the palm against his jaw. His eyes wide open, this close, he sees nothing. He feels the little breaths over his own mouth, each inhale and exhale. They’re slow but unsteady, unable to calm.

The kiss starts soft, but neither he nor Bill can keep it tame. Bill angles his head to the side and it’s deeper; Dipper pushes into him, forgetting to breathe, slipping his hands into the demon’s hair and gripping at the roots, pulling him closer, making each intense jam of flesh course sharply to his fingertips. A thick slickness coats their lips, little bumps of tongue in between each bruising kiss, and the air he strains to take in tangles with Bill’s, stealing, giving, taking all over again.

He could keep kissing him; he’d love to keep losing himself, each dainty hitch of breath makes Dipper want to drag and haul the demon out of his seat and unto his lap, but the kiss softens too soon, too quick.

Bill pulls away, and his fingers slip from those waving locks. The demon reaches into the backseat and produces the shopping bags, putting them between his feet.

“Sweet dreams, kid.”

It’s the last thing he says, leaning up and toward Dipper again, placing a soft, chaste kiss just at the side of his mouth, before opening the car door, taking his bags and stepping out. He closes it shut with his foot.

Dipper sees him one last time, bright and unreal through the car’s window.

And he can’t wait to dream tonight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I’m taking a break from writing this fic due to school getting busier by the day. Our exams will be on the third week of August and the entrance exams for senior high school are fast approaching on September, so I’ll be real busy on the coming months. Do not fret, this will be completed, I’ll be damned if I don’t update ‘till the last chapter. But for now, we’ll all be taking a break, won’t we?
> 
> The story is halfway. Chapter five will be a special chapter. Take note, I will not be posting a new chapter for about two months.
> 
> (Edit: Sept. 14, 2015 - Expect an update this week.)


	5. Limbo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Storge: family love
> 
> Ex. Stanley “Stanford” Pines

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I’m back! Guess I couldn’t really keep away for two busy months.
> 
> Even now, I still can’t grasp it – we’ve made a rec list! A couple of days after chapter four was up, this fic was lucky enough to land the rec list of levy120. Dude, there are no words to describe how glad I am! To think I’ve barely made the plot arch, it’s just…wow. The thought of someone finding this fic as something worth recommending makes me dizzy!
> 
> Heads up to any German readers I have; levy120 does German fandubs for Gravity Falls. Better check her out when you’ve finished reading – she makes an awesome Mabel! Here’s her [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/user/DubbingLevy) and her [Tumblr](http://levy120.tumblr.com) blog. Once again, my heart goes out to you levy120, best regards!
> 
> I guess it applies that Not What He Seems and all episodes after never happened, yeah? Also, it would be relieving to, like, scream with someone about that scene with Dipper and Ford.

**Chapter 5**

Stanford Pines hasn’t been this nervous since his last year of high school.

Five o’clock. The shack is peculiarly quiet as he wakes up. In a town like Gravity Falls, one’s morning rooster is the gloomy chill that drifts from the mountains. But of course, there’s nothing wrong, it’s always the case. An hour later, he’s made coffee and breakfast for himself, and proceeds with setting up the gift shop and museum. Another day of masked swindling, he reckons, whistling a little as he donned his suit. The house is still, other than him sweeping up the entrances and stocking up.

Eight fifteen. He takes care for the pancake batter to be free of lumps. It’s only once in the past two years he could cook for someone; he better not mess it up. Stan takes a pinch of cinnamon and sprinkles it into the bowl – the smell of bacon frying in the other pan would surely wake the boy up.

After fumbling with pans and struggling with the fridge door, a steaming plate of pancakes sits on the table with a bottle of syrup on the right, orange juice on the left. Stan sips at his warm coffee while waiting for familiar footsteps to come padding down the stairs. He waits for a quarter of an hour, but as the minutes trickle by, it’s as silent as when he had woken up. Stan makes a third mug and places another plate on top of the pancakes to keep them warm.

Nine o’clock. The engine of a tour bus makes Stan reluctantly abandon the kitchen and grab his eight-ball from the doorway, swiftly shoving on his fez to meet the new set of tourists. As he greets the cheery lot of snapping cameras and wandering eyes, he can’t help being disappointed; looks like it’s one more morning without his grandnephew.

Spirits buzzing after the tour, back on his way to the kitchen, the clock reads twelve minutes into ten. He peaks in, expecting the plate empty and the glass clear. They weren’t. Stan broodingly stares at them, frowning an inch.

“Kid stayed up late,” Stan tells himself.

The senior’s sprightly mood dwindles as he touches the plate at eleven thirty. It’s gotten cold. He places it in the microwave and retreats the orange juice back in the fridge.

There’s a young couple perusing the gift shop. Later, he punches in two matching shirts with lesser sarcastic glee than usual.

He tucks in his gut when he looks at the clock again and finds out it’s well into twelve that afternoon. Those packs of ramen should be out of the cupboard by now. Stan glances at the empty staircase. After moments of hesitation, he climbs up the steps, making wood squeak. The stained triangle window casts the door in faded scarlet.

 Stan knocks with clammy knuckles.

“Dipper?” Silence answers.

“Kid, you gotta eat,” he calls into the door, brows knitting. Not a rustle comes from the other side.

When the silence persists, he unsteadily announces, “I’ll be coming in, okay?”

A deserted attic room greets him after swinging the door open as wide as it could go. Stan’s hand stiffens on the doorknob.

“Dipper? You there?” His voice is loud and worried. “Dipper, where are you?” He enters shakily, looking about in panic. Stan checked the alcove and its closets. He found no one. Under the bed and on the upper landing gave the same grave result.

Thus, standing alone in that room filled with the remnants of the girl who was his sunshine and the solid shapes of the boy who was his moon, the man who did not know fear felt it slithering up his spine. Stan couldn’t shrug off the tiny possibility whispering from the back of his mind, that feeble, terrible idea he dared not think out loud for fear of it taking a command of its own.

He doesn’t believe himself when he tries to hope that Dipper is just missing, not gone. He jogs out the attic, bolting down the stairs and out the gift shop. Dammit, how was he so careless to not have noticed the missing car?

“Fuck, Stan,” he curses under his breath, remembering how he’d given the boy his spare keys.

So he went off to Lookout Point, or somewhere else. That didn’t mean he was alright.

“Heh, why am I so worried?” He laughs, puffing out his chest. _That’s right. Fill yourself with false hope._ “Dipper’s nineteen, he’s been to college. He’ll be fine.”

What he says betrays his thoughts. The more he tries to break that awful idea down, the more it gets louder, until it’s practically screaming away at him, until it’s all Stan can hear, laying out that wretched possibility right in his face. He’s been warned about this by the boy’s parents when Dipper decided to start coming back, and it creeps back into him just how scared Dipper’s mother was, her voice not above a mutter, filtering through the telephone with those last words, _keep him safe, we trust you._

They trusted him and look what he’s done – he let their last child go without supervision because he’s been too bent on trying to help that it never crossed his mind if he was only making it worse.

Another one down the drain, it seemed. It’s as if he never learned.

When he picks up the telephone, mind going to pieces, his hands were shaking so bad he had to punch in the number thrice.

“Sheriff Blubs?” His voice is stiff, as if he was preventing something from breaking through.

The tight pause on the other line indicates not only surprise but also disbelief. “Stanford Pines? What – “

Stan places all his weight on the hand that holds the edge of the table. “Listen, my grandnephew Dipper - you know him, right? – I checked his room this morning and he’s not there, my car ain’t around either. I think he’s – he’s missing, Blubs. Have you seen him?”

Sherriff Blubs might as well be spitting out his coffee. “I’m afraid I haven’t – “

“Then if you do, I’m asking you, call me back. I’d go myself, but I can’t leave the shack, I’m the only one guarding the place and these tourists aren’t gonna sc – yeah,” he stops there, catching himelf.

Sheriff Blubs is silent on the other line, probably too suspecting to take Stan seriously.

He can’t give up, not now. “Listen, I know we’re not in the best terms – “

“Pug trafficking,” Blubs says in a warning tone.

“Yeah, that, and many others, but my only grandnephew is missing and I’m going to be responsible if – if he does something stupid, if he’s _already done_ something stupid, so _please_ – “ it physically hurt to say that word out loud, but it didn’t matter now , “– give me a call when you do see him, thank you.”

“…Pines.”

“Y-Yes?”

“Any more details?”

Stan felt something break. “I don’t really know what time he left, but he didn’t come down at nine for breakfast, so I’m guessing he was gone real early in the morning or late last night.”

There’s shuffling and thin static, like a pencil scratching on paper. “Physical description? I’ve got your car model; god knows how many times we’ve had to get it on record.”

Stan didn’t laugh. “He’s nineteen, about six feet, scrawny, got messy brown hair that looks like he hasn’t brushed it since birth, brown eyes. Looks a lot older than he lets. A little pale, sharp-faced, looks like he’ll punch you if you say the wrong thing, yeah.”

More scribbling. “’Aight, I’ll make some calls, send some units around town exits and entrances. Pick up the phone when he’s not back by nightfall.”

“Thank you, jeez, you don’t know how worried I am,” Stan croaks, not finding enough shattered pride to be embarrassed.

Blubs sighs. “Trust me, I ain’t real fond of ol’ city boy nor you, but it’s someone missing. Small town like this and still? It’s going on my file.”

Stan juggles with that being a joke or not. “Good to know you still sympathize, Blubs.”

“Wish you luck, Pines.”

 

 

He should be used to eating alone for more or less thirty years, but now, the ringing silence mocks him, keeping his thoughts stuck in reverse. The past few weeks where he could eat in comfort with Dipper had improved the stale, fake taste of noodles, but now, it sticks to the roof of his mouth like rotting onions.

The day passes by slow; he’s glad he could keep smiling as he introduced atrocity after atrocity, telling fake stories to make up for the real one. For half his life, it’s all he’s ever lived for, and every time he lets himself hear it, his smile wavers.

Maybe he’s not the only one with thoughts like that, maybe he’s not the only one regretting the things he thought he would be proud of, but there’s no point in thinking that now. This could be his next mistake, his next _I didn’t mean it_ , and this time, he knows there’s nothing he can do to fix anything. This time, he can’t bring him back.

Each time the phone rings with negative news, he feels hope wearing thinner, getting more meaningless. Hours of troubled ennui passes, and he finds himself sitting at the empty gift shop counter when again, a high ring fills the quiet house.

“Mystery Shack,” he mutters, picking up the phone.

“Well, hi, this is Susan, from Greasy’s?”

He’d called earlier that day, along with several others, immediately after Blubs hung up. Stan has called Susan twice now, asking if she's seen Dipper out the window, and she’s given him negatives all the way.

“Yeah, Susan,” his eyes trail over a line of blue and white hats, still on stock, and he has to avert them before his gut can punch out his heart.

“Just calling to say Dipper was here, uh, about fifteen minutes ago?”

His blood froze in his veins.

Fifteen minutes ago. Dipper was in Greasy’s. Dipper is still in town, he can’t be that far. Dipper is still here.

“Real sorry I couldn’t call earlier, the kitchens were _woozing._ ”

“No, it's fine, is he okay? Did he look hurt?”

“He looked alright, Mr. Pines. I’d even say he looked better than last time he was here.”

Stan can’t quite catch his breath – he’s slouched with relief, a hand unsteadily clapped on his wrinkly forehead. Finally, it’s not over yet.

“Thank God,” Stan wheezes, “the kid’s alright, he’s safe.”

 _He’s alive_ , the old man longed to add, but hearing the soft reassurance from his own thoughts was better than speaking it out loud. His breaths come in easier; deep, sound inhales.

“Mr. Pines, you alright?” Susan’s concerned voice comes filtering through. Stan almost forgot he was still talking to someone. “Are you having a stroke?”

“I freaking hope not,” Stan grins.

“Oh, almost slipped my mind,” and Stan could hear the giddy beam in her shrill voice, “there was a friend he dragged along. Real sweet, that lil’ chum.”

Shit. “’Lil’ chum’?” And he sputters out, a stone smashing his gut, “ _Gideon?_ ”

“Wha’? No!” Susan cackles, and Stan can see her shaking her head, maybe overfilling another mug. “Another someone, didn’t look like a local. Couldn’t really tell if they were a lady or a dude, so I let slip ‘lad’ instead, silly me. Looked younger than your grandnephew by a year or two, pretty gold hair, old clothes, propped his feet on the table for a while before Dipper told him off.”

“Friend, huh? That’s weird,” Stan says, mentally ticking off anyone he knew in the town with that description. He couldn’t find anyone.

“Sorry I was late in picking up the phone, even if I did wanna, I couldn’t really slack off.”

“No, I understand, it’s just that…I was really worried, you know what that boy’s been through.” He pauses briefly. “Remember what I told you? He’s…he can be unstable, could be doing stuff, stupid stuff, and I won’t be there for the kid. His sister’s death really took a toll on him, and so far, I’ve done a bang-up job as a guardian.”

“Ah, don’t sweat it,” Susan reassures. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. Dipper will be home soon. I don’t think you should worry much, those two seem all right to me.”

Did Dipper not tell him about what he was really off to do yesterday night, maybe even morning? Stan was held with reserved curiosity. Was this a friend he wasn’t told of? From the little slips of information, this person and Dipper seemed to have a sort of crooked friendship. Did Dipper go to hang out with an old buddy?

Stan shakes his head with a slow chuckle. “Thank you, thanks a bunch, but really, if something happened to Dipper because of me,” and he trails off, silently putting the phone down.

 

 

Dipper was no soldier; he’s just a boy.

When the sweet trance of driving away from that vessel’s apartment wore off, a dreading awareness of the worst not yet being over slowly whispers back at him. He was seized by nerves; suddenly, he was afraid of having broken an unspoken rule of someone still scarily resolute with their commands. Their emotions were fleeting, pity can fade. It doesn’t take long to think of a few examples; school counselors, his shank.

With grave realization, a big part of him still believed Stan was among them. The wounded are meek; there is a certain crevice that won’t allow him to take chances. He still hammered in his mind the inflexible great uncle of his early years. Who knows what might Stan do when he gets home? Dipper saw an intense concentration of anger Stan had for him, and sadly, he was back to where he began; to seeing the worst in people he loved.

As of now, fear overrode trust. He believed Stan would hate him.

Turning into the stretch of dirt road, Dipper drove slower, feet jumpy on the pedals. He saw the shack as a bomb that might set off any moment. The car’s engine goes out softly, as if the car itself knew how fucked Dipper was. His first step out the vehicle forces him to suck in a breath and shudder.

Dipper enters through the gift shop. The door seems to have read his situation and doesn’t squeak. The sticky silence, however, doesn’t help.

But a few steps into the shop, a weary voice calls, “Dipper? Is that you?”

The boy dared not breathe. Misaligned footsteps, as if the one who walked doubted, came all the way from the kitchen then to the living room, which flooded with light through the Employee’s Only door.

Dipper was stuck in his limbs, unable to move as Stan emerged through the swinging door. The senior’s paleness elevated into sickly, his tie had been callously loosened, and you could tell from the thin sheen of sweat on his forehead that he’d been a shaken, sitting duck for hours. His aged eyes were intense, wide, taking a tinge of pink, showing a certain expression of fatigue. Little tremors shook his broad shoulders.

Stan was dread in the face of blind hope.

The senior looked at Dipper like he wasn’t real. His mighty hands shook weakly, the image of granite collapsing.

Dipper braced himself for the angry speech.

But Stan says nothing, because he seizes the boy in a desperate hug, practically crushing him under anxious strength. He just holds him there, like Dipper was a precious stone that almost slipped through his fingers.

Dipper’s mind raced with his heart. His whole body pulsed with each heavy whack of his chest, locked in this unexpected embrace.

“Thank Christ, you’re alive!” Stan sputters from behind his head, “You’re here, you’re actually here!”

The boy stares off, at the shapeless shop décor that hung from the wall, jaw hanging as he witnessed his slice of hell get crushed to bits.

Why was Stan was hugging him? Stan pulls back, settling his palms over Dipper’s shoulders. The smile that graces his mouth fires bullets into Dipper’s conscience.

“I-I’m just so relieved to see you,” Stan looks him over, smiling that harrowing smile only the elderly were capable of. “kid, where have you _been?_ I was worried out of my head! You had me pacing floors and tapping tables thinking ‘bout whatever happened to you!”

Those words were said in a tone of eased torment, not a lick of anger. Dipper grapples for words he didn’t expect to say until a long sermon was over, upset with shame.

“I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to make you worry."

“Keep 'em,” Stan rubs at his eye with the back of his hand, “You’re alive, that’s what’s important. Goddammit, you don’t know, _you don’t know_ – I’ve already lost my grandniece. I can’t afford to lose you, too.”

It surprised him beyond anything else - Stan was afraid of losing him. That terror of loss he spoke with came from somewhere deep, so deep that Dipper wasn’t sure if it entirely came from Mabel’s death.

“I should be the one apologizing, I should’ve been more responsible, not telling you to just go off like that. If you were gone a handful more hours, I would’ve needed to call your parents and – God, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself!”

“Thank you for worrying, but really, I shouldn’t have been away for too long. I’m sorry, Grunkle Stan.”

“Kid, it’s not about you leaving, it’s – “ and Stan abruptly ends there, scrunching his brows at him with a snort. “I would be furious at you if only I had the right to.” and he straightens up, “But if you still believe I hate you or whatever, you gotta stop thinking that everyone has this dumb foundation of hatred for you. Really. Like what I said, I couldn’t hate you if I tried. Just, never scare me like that again, okay,?”

Dipper faintly grins when he says, “I wouldn’t dream of it, Grunkle Stan.”

Then Stan claps him on the back, still not entirely calmed, tone a rigid copy of his usual slipshod voice, “Right, enough affection-spilling. You’ve got a lot of storytelling to do, kiddo.”

Those words that should have been spat with venom were said in nothing but casual, joyful relief. They walk to the dining room and he sits himself on the table while Grunkle Stan went off to order pizza.

His story was extensive; Dipper answered everything important, trying his best not to tell any unnecessary lies. The time he left, where he’d gone (“It _is_ spectacular,” Dipper added with a shrug), and what he did when he had woken up. The story was omitted clean of Bill. His excuse for going to the mall was to simply “pass the time with an old friend”. When asked for a description, he had said “dressed like a mom, blond hair,” which, for some reason, satisfied Stan the most, as if was waiting for someone like that to be introduced somewhere. Stan’s questions even seemed to grind to a halt.

The whole day left him inexplicably tired. Flitting scenes of the shopping spree with Pacifica and Bill along with the recent familial fiasco vaguely shaded his thoughts as he stood under the warm shower. He dries himself off slowly, eyes sluggish, his flesh relaxed under softened, suppled skin. The towel used to dry off his hair stays on his head as he digs for a sweatshirt and some loose pants.

Once his hair refused to dry more, Dipper drops face-first into his pillow. His heavy thoughts wane quickly as he laid down in a clean, warmed, soft sense of pleasant exhaustion. Curling up under his blanket, the last thing he sees before closing his eyes is Mabel’s gently moonlit side of the room.

 

 

A dangerous air claws at the boy’s lungs. Unfocused, dazed and ragged, the wind blows in a vicious channel over his body as that great vehicle seemed to brush his sleeve in its furious speed. In a blur, made known only by desperate honking, the vehicle is gone. It has slammed upon the metal hedging.

“Show’s over, roll credits!”

When he turns around to meet that oddly echoing voice, the triangular form of Bill floats listlessly inclined in the air, as if Bill’s elbow was on something. His feet were propped up, crossed at the ankles. Dipper was extremely aware of himself and his surroundings; he felt each dull shudder of his limbs, the chilly air, the bleak road and the sad sky. Dipper took in a sharp breath – the smell of earth pierced his nose.

“Am I dreaming?” Dipper yells, so physically alert that his jaw trembled with his loud voice.

“Lucid dreaming, kid!” Bill gives his cane a twirl, “also, you gotta admit I shouldn’t’ve meddled with the old man’s icky head.”

“I was hoping you would,” Dipper had to shout over the crying wind. “My uncle was more than upset, Bill.”

The demon chuckles. “Didn’t you see it? I repeat, ‘you gotta stop thinking that everyone has this dumb foundation of hatred for you.’ Face it, you’re the old geezer’s only chick left and guess what? He _adores_ you. Besides, I haven’t made any collateral damage, have I?”

“He was about to tell my parents I was missing!”

“ _About_ to, exactly my point.”

Dipper sighs, finding it pointless to keep arguing. “Did you really have to be in my dream to tell me that?”

“Business right away, I see.” Bill sinks lower, towards Dipper’s line of sight. “That wasn’t why I’m floating ‘round your mind. Remember what I said? Give me a few days? It starts now, kid.”

Dipper sneers. “What kind of thing are you up to now?”

“Well, not much, just permission to enter your mindscape.”

“Stupid, you’re already in it,” he says with a little smirk.

“I did as well. Turns out it’s a dummy tape.” He laughs, as if telling Dipper to wipe the grin off his face. However, his laugh was empty; Bill didn’t enjoy this fact. “It’s the same nightmare over and over. All these years, you’ve ingrained it into yourself. You’ve constructed it so well that your brain sees it as default. Your mindscape, however, is somewhere deeper. Explains why I don’t see any doors.”

His smirk had bent into a frown. Whatever “dummy tape” was, it didn’t sound good.

“What are you going to do in there? And why do you need permission?”

“Gonna look for something, and I can’t go in without a sort of consent. Your head is, like, under Martial Law or something. Guess those bad memories didn’t simply go away, huh?”

The wind picked up. Dipper couldn’t stand by himself without holding his feet down.

“Why I should let you through?”

Bill grins. “Because I can dig up something that’s not a nightmare.”

A rumble comes from the dimming sky. Dipper ignores it. “What do you mean?”

“Good memories. I’m sure you still have a speck of ‘em left, hidden behind tear barrels. And don’t worry much, you’ll be with me the whole time. I have a feeling those doors won’t open by themselves.”

“How can you guarantee it?”

The demon raises one brow. “When’s the last time you had a good dream?”

That was easy; four years ago. Dipper frowns, looking at his shoes.

“You’ve hardly dreamed any, did you?”

 He doesn’t need to say something; Bill already knew.

“I can flash you your greatest hits, kid, you just gotta let me into your mindscape.”

Just one good dream, it’s all he’s asking. Just one good dream.

“If this goes sideways – “

“It won’t, I have no use for doing that,” Bill affirms, “but you have to trust me.”

And the ground beneath Dipper shook along with the loud streak of thunder roaring forcefully from above. Tall grass from the cliff’s slopes bent flat against the wind, small rocks fidgeted and rolled into the road.

It was his head warning him about what he was about to do, maybe foretelling a disaster. However, a small spark of hope told him it could be the losing command of the miserable wall – afraid of being broken down, afraid of Dipper seeing light.

“Quick,” Bill yells over the bellowing thunder and strong air, urgently holding out his little black hand to Dipper. “There’s something that doesn’t want me here. No time for hesitation, you have to trust me.”

The wind cried away at the boy, begging him not to speak nor decide. It muttered out a message he could not logically understand, yet he felt its tone of distress – _don’t you dare, Dipper._

The boy grit his teeth, shivering as he made his choice in a spur, grabbing Bill’s little hand sharply.

“I trust you.”

Parchment, diamond, chimerical blindness, sonder, aubades, birth, ash – for a thin moment, the world zipped to black, to _nothing,_ before he is slapped with the hazy, tweaking grayscale image of his bedroom back in California.

“Welcome to your mindscape, Pine Tree.”

 

 

His room was a mess, scarcely lit, and the photos on his drawer had completely blurred faces, including his own. On his walls that seemed to cave were once-there posters, with flickering phrases and little prints that were all in code. The limitless ceiling dripped with the sound of dropping needles here and there.  His closet’s door was swaying slightly, back and forth, and he can sense that something had recently gone into it. Papers torn from books, newspapers, notes and printed text were hastily taped on one side of his room, connected by a webby clutter of the only colored thing in the room; red yarn. A soft knocking came from the wall space above the head of his bed, which was a barrier between his and Mabel’s room, while a cheap perfume odor hung unsteadily.

Dipper was unnerved by his own room.

He found that he was still gripping vice-like on Bill’s hand. Quickly, he slipped his hold away.

“Come on, kid. Follow me.”

Bill floats out his door, which was wide open. Outside, doors upon doors, which looked menacingly, disturbingly similar, lined each hall, and the walls of the house were high, because above each closed door were about five more lines of doors. There was a ladder in a corner, but it was angrily banged into woodchips.

In fact, a heap of ladders were shoved into the end of one hall, all banged up, like someone was preventing an intruder from entering into the doors.

They went downstairs. The air continued to mumble silent, cotton sentences. Just like the pictures in his room, the family portraits and individual pictures lining the wall were blurred to nothing. Mabel looked to have been hacked out of every family portrait. When they passed by a wall mirror, Bill’s yellow image turned gray, and Dipper’s reflection twitched.

Bill turned into the kitchen, which was sharply clean, where it felt as if the cupboards had valleys inside them. Two glasses of milk were on the counter; one empty, one filled.

“I always poured hers,” Dipper whispers, “I frequently forgot she wasn’t there anymore.”

Bill reeled them away and turned into another hall, where it was the same; doors upon doors upon doors.

“Do you have a basement?” Bill asks, floating along the hall, Dipper jogging beside him.

“No, only an attic.”

“Wrong, wrong,” Bill mutters, mostly to himself, “wrong, wrong, wrong.”

“Why are you looking for a basement?”

But Bill doesn’t answer him; instead, his little black hand tugs at his wrist, and the demon zips out of the hall, making Dipper hastily sprint, the fastest he had run since chasing that bird into the forest.

They’re back upstairs, and Bill is making for Mabel’s room. Dipper saw it as a sacred shrine. A sweet aroma from the door’s crack wafts into Dipper’s nose.

Bill tries to open the knob. It refuses him.

“Of course, Shooting Star wouldn’t want me in,” Bill laughs.

Dipper made an involuntary move to stand halfway between Bill and the door. “Why do you want to open her room?”

“Silly, it’s your good memories. You seem to connect Mabel with happiness. And it makes sense, since I can’t open the door.”

Dipper made the quick equation in his head. “You were looking for a basement.”

“Still am, it’s in here. And it looks like it doesn’t want us in.”

Nonetheless, Dipper was apprehensive about Bill getting in through Mabel’s door. “Stand back, and I’ll try.”

“Hit it with your best shot, kid,” Bill shrugs, floating a few yards away.

Dipper’s breaths are bated as his hand wraps over the warmed knob. He turns. It permits him.

“Huh,” the demon buzzed, impressed.

Dipper swings it open, but his heart crashes down to sink, because he doesn’t see Mabel’s room.

There is no pink bed and pastel walls. In fact, it’s completely disappeared, and he is met with the only thing inside the door; a dark, cramped space with a heavy trap door on its floor, sealed with a tiny lock. The corners of its low ceiling are sewed with silvery spider webs.

“Can I look now?” Bill calls. Dipper, disappointed, beckons him with a hand.

“It’s not her room,” he softly says when Bill is beside him.

“Mindscapes aren’t always what they seem to be, kid.” He almost sounds sorry.

Bill sets the lock on fire with a point of his finger and it disintegrates like a burnt leaf.

Dipper hauls open the bulky wood, and he squints into black space while Bill does a merry sound.

“Looks like I gotta make a steep jump if I want to get some memories,” the demon smiles.

“What are you talking about?” Dipper asks, “There’s nothing down there.”

Bill stares at him. “Kid, there’s a vertical hallway, real steep, like an open elevator with doors on all sides as you go down.”

“No, really. There’s nothing there, I don’t see a thing.”

 Bill halts. “Not a single door?”

“Not one.”

If Bill had a mouth, he’d be scowling, as if trying to figure out his way through a difficult puzzle.

“Yeesh, kid,” the demon winces. “Try putting your hand inside.”

Dipper stretches his hand into the doorway. Inky darkness swallows what was inserted. It felt as if he had thrust his hand into a vortex of liquid numbers diluted into hot fog. He withdraws immediately.

“Nothing,” Dipper states again. “I guess my hand disappeared when I put it in.”

“I got no choice, then. You’re staying here. Who knows what might happen if you go in there, ever heard of people getting stuck in their own head?” Bill eases into the dark fill of the basement door. “If you start feeling drowsy, don’t sweat it; means I got something.”

“Why can’t I see it? It doesn’t make sense, this is _my_ head.”

“Hey, some people’s heads don’t like their owners very much,” Bill taps the side of his hat, “Marilyn Monroe, Pythagoras, Helen Keller.”

“But I lost Mabel, not – not anything like that,” he croaks.

“Exactly. You lost Shooting Star.”

And Bill disappears, absorbed by black ink.

Not seconds later did Dipper’s consciousness fall into itself and he collapsed against the doorway, his head inches from the trap door, absorbed in sleep.

 

 

Dipper wakes up from his bed in the attic.

For a moment, he thought Bill had tricked him. He looks around frantically. Different elements of the room were smothered; everything was a powdered, flickering image. However, it was bright, the lamp on his table coating the whole room in cheerful, sunny hues. The white holiday lights Mabel hung over the wall of her bed blinked alternatively.

But the last time he tried making those lights go up again, they never worked.

Dipper’s eyes strayed to her bed. There was the lower, thicker one, but the comfortable upper mattress was missing. So were her quilt, pillows and stuffed animals.

“Dipper! Go get the lamp!”

It was Stan’s voice, all the way down from the front yard. Curious and stupefied, Dipper walks over to the triangle window and looks down.

Soos’ pick-up truck was on the front lawn, and he appeared to be helping Stan with what he could discern as Mabel’s mattress into the back of the truck. On a box beside their feet was all of Mabel’s stuffed animals, along with some big, new ones, and numerous fluffy quilts and comforters.

“Wait a moment, Grunkle Stan,” said a voice from downstairs, one that he knew as his own; awkward, deepening and still cracking.

For a solid second, Dipper couldn’t breathe nor move – it was _this_ memory. Bill had done it.

A pattering of footsteps came from beyond the door. Dipper, on the verge of elation, saw his thirteen-year-old self enter the attic. The child had a giddy smile on his young face that made dire melancholy shrill down Dipper’s stomach. It pained him to the bones seeing it - his hair was still a messy plop, topped with his once-loved hat, but instead of the vest, he wore a thick, outdoor jacket.

This younger self did not seem to feel his presence, because he walks right over to the lamp and grabs it, quickly going out of the attic, which had gone aglow with the holiday lights. Dipper swallows the lump down his throat and, heart racing happily, follows the child.

The sky is a weird hue of purple-black through the windows, and looking at the clock, it’s 9:23. That same sweet smell he picked up from outside Mabel’s room in his mindscape now stuck to the air; it was the scent of newly baked cookies.

He skids into the living room, but stops dead in his tracks when he sees her – the equally thirteen-year-old image of Mabel, sweater-clad, sitting on the yellow couch, blindfolded, swinging her feet happily and hands crumpling the ends of her skirt. Her gleaming smile was a little anxious yet eager nonetheless. Among the blurring sides of the shack, she stood out vividly.

Dipper felt as if he was stabbed through the ribcage. He was seeing Mabel; perfectly safe, cheerful, sprightly, _alive_.

Then a lock of her hair seemed to unnaturally flutter, and he’s reminded it’s just a dream, but damn it all if he didn’t allow himself to be happy as he watched, for the first time in four years, his sister in flesh that wasn’t rotting into wet mold.

As his younger self passed by, he said to Mabel, “Just a little longer, sis,” before skipping out to the gift shop. Dipper, feeling like he’d be slammed by too much joy if he stayed longer, did not dare reach out to Mabel, afraid she’ll turn to thin air, and hastily followed his younger self.

Outside, it was one of those rare nights in Gravity Falls where the wind blew a hint of warmth. Soos and Stan have arranged the mattress into a snug, cozy alcove of a bed in the back of the truck, piled with big pillows on top of quilts in hues of pink, purple and soft brown. Stuffed toys were daintily piled in a corner. Beside it was a small tray of cookies, no doubt what had been baked. A similar set of twinkling holiday lights lined the sides of the truck.

“I’ve got it,” said his younger self, handing the lamp to Stan.

“Thanks, kiddo.” The senior places it among the pillows. In an instant, Soos’ pick-up truck was transformed into a little girl’s dream haven of a bed. Just looking at its magical pleasantness made Dipper want to fall asleep all over again.

“D’you really think this will help?” his younger self asks, the smile he had turning unsure. Grunkle Stan nods.

“Sure it will. Mabel’s gonna love it, Dip.”

“Oh man, I am so excited,” Soos cheered, a cute stuffed giraffe wedged in one arm, “should I go call her?”

“Go ahead,” Stan agreed, and Soos goes back in the shack, certainly to fetch Mabel.

Dipper watches Stan give a pat to the child’s hat-covered head. The expression on his face is of rare affection, one Stan doesn’t often allow himself to show.

“I promise it’ll help. Lighten up. By morning, Mabel will be back to being, well, Mabel.”

“I hope so,” the child helplessly shrugged, tugging at the end of a quilt, “she couldn’t sleep for nights because of that. I can’t watch her stare at the ceiling instead of getting sleep.”

“Me neither, kid. But if there’s free therapy I know of, it’s this.”

And just then, Soos emerged from the door, carefully guiding Mabel by the shoulders.

“Brace yourself for the awesome, dude,” Soos grinned, setting her in front of the truck’s back. Dipper watched his younger self grab the cuff of her sweater.

“Ready, sis?”

“Been ready since you sat me on the couch!”

That was her voice! Fireworks went off in his head; Dipper thought he’d never hear it again – all he was ever used to hearing was the made-up screams of his nightmares, where he saw not Mabel but a dying corpse – but now he’s standing close, hearing it clear as a bell.

“On three, dude. One, two, three!” And Soos untied the blindfold.

He didn’t need to be in front of Mabel to know what her face looked like. With a deep gasp, her entire upper body sized up in thrill, and she seemed to have stood on tiptoes for a few seconds, gleefully taking in the beautiful surprise her family has prepared for her. All at once she threw herself on her twin brother with a frantic hug.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

Even if it was hazy, he could see the sun in her eyes. Mabel was filled with a kind of joy that made Dipper’s own heart melt. His cheeks were stretched with a long-forgotten smile, watching his younger self laugh as he got tackled to the ground with open, warm affection.

This was just six years ago. It felt like forever, no – it didn’t feel as if he owned this memory. It was so foreign, so past his belief, to think that once, he was _this_ happy.

It lasted a full minute, and after helping her brother up, she then hugged Soos, who ruffled her hair with a chuckle, and at last tackled Grunkle Stan at the waist.

“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh,” she beamed, looking up at the senior with a smile full of braces, “it’s amazing! Did you actually put this up for me?”

“Yep, with Soos and Dipper’s help, of course. Go on, attack your stuffed toys.”

And she did; she went over, bouncing the whole truck, and grabbed the biggest bear, which looked even larger than her, and hugged it to her torso.

“We were looking for a way to make sleeping a lot more comfortable for you,” his younger self continued, “so, if you’ve already guessed it, we’ll be spending the night lying down here while they drive.”

“Sleeping under the stars, dude,” Soos added, “ain’t it cool? It’s even better when you’re moving.”

He can’t exactly describe the look on Mabel’s face – it’s a good mix of excitement, gratitude, admiration and love.

Grunkle Stan leaned on the side of the truck, crossing his arms, unable to stop smiling himself. “It’s as awesome as it is cheesy, kiddo. No bad dreams are allowed to pester my grandniece tonight.”

Mabel was close to tears. Her hands were trembling around the soft belly of the bear. “Thank you,” she beamed, “I think tonight, I can finally get some proper sleep.”

“Well,” Soos called, “should we get driving now? The sky’s waiting, dudes.”

“Let’s go!” Mabel cheered, and Dipper, helped up by his sister, went to sit beside her on the mattress.

“You kids better behave,” Stan said, opening the passenger’s seat, “and also, have fun. We’ve got hot chocolate in thermoses, just rap on metal when you need ‘em.”

“Yes, Grunkle Stan,” the twins said in unison, with Dipper murmuring it under his breath. He was touching the edge of a quilt, much like the child had done, and it simmered around his fingers in a pastel-hued mist.

No sooner has Stan shut the door did his younger self speak, arms spread out. “Awkward sibling hug?”

Mabel set aside the bear. “Awkward sibling hug.”

From where Dipper stood, Mabel could have been looking at him. The twins both held their laughs when they did their signature hug, and it may have looked stiff to anyone, but they knew it wasn’t, not for them.

The truck drives off, and Dipper hears Mabel’s last joyful yell of “Dumb things forever!” echo back softly as they disappear into the dirt road.

It’s weird, watching happiness that had been his own, because as he lives now, it’s so far, so fucking far.

But he’ll damned if he didn’t allow himself to feel happy, grinning stupidly wide, because for the first time in four years, he had seen something he never thought he’d see again.

Dipper wakes up.


	6. Blanks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Philia: friendship love
> 
> Ex. Wendy Corduroy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I am overwhelmed; I’ve got two amazing peeps to shower with thanks - dear Lorrean, founder of “The Best of Pine Tree and Bill Cipher” community on FF.net for placing this fic among their list, and of course to the wonderful billdip-national-library on Tumblr (yet again!) for making an individual post (your comment personally amused me, hehe) in respect to this fic! Thank you, every inch of support I may get from you guys makes me glad to keep sharing this little story with you.
> 
> Thanks to shppa for helping me with this one. Also, I know next to nothing about guns; every bit I do have is from too much Supernatural.

**Chapter 6**

He wants to avoid it; leaving this memory and waking up. He doesn’t want to abandon it; why should he when it’s so beautiful? When it’s every good thing he no longer has, when it’s every little thing he still wished he had, when there, his sister lives? But his thoughts are fleshing out, ripening, inching into reality closer and closer; consciousness is a dignified force, and he has to wake up.

He opens his eyes, absorbing the dusty ceiling of the attic, breathing out deeply. And before he knows it, he’s smiling.

It slowly, quietly came to Dipper; he felt good.

Scratch that; the more he was aware of the soft yellow sunlight through the window, the steadfast reverence of Mabel’s side of the room – as he opened his eyes and _saw,_ Dipper felt absolutely wonderful.

He sat up, a hand smothering over his face and through his hair. God, how long has it been since he last smiled like this, as if the space of his cheeks weren’t enough? He looked at Mabel’s side of the room – it was so lovely, pink beddings and endearing stuffed toys basked in a sunny hue, and while the holiday lights didn’t have a weak twinkle against the bright of day, nor did the sheets rumple from what could have been his sister’s sleep, it had never looked so cheerful, so alive, to him.

Looking at it all, at everything he still had, Dipper was happy.

The words ‘good morning’ didn’t make as much sense to him as it did when Grunkle Stan greeted him coming down the stairs. The boy returned it with even more vigor, and he watches with glee as Stan’s bushy eyebrows migrated up his forehead. He could hardly keep still as he ate breakfast, swinging his feet underneath the table. Twice, he nudged Stan’s pant leg.

“Your pancakes are amazing,” Dipper grins, shoving food in his mouth. Stan shook his head a bit, sipping his mug.

“Woke up nice, didja, kid?” Stan remarks. He’d never admit how well Dipper’s good mood was affecting him.

“Good friggin’ morning, Grunkle Stan.”

Stan hides his smile behind his mug.

Dipper hummed all throughout morning, like an inaudible song was flitting through the shack. His spirits were so high that he watered that miserable plant by the windowsill. He helped Stan stock up the gift shop then gingerly pinned his nametag to his collar. Hell, he was so happy, he took a shower.

Dipper was still singing ‘Disco Girl’ under his breath while a customer looked about the gift shop. Really, at one point he dug up Stan’s old gramophone, stuck in the first upbeat song he recognized from the dusty vinyl records, and let it play from the gift shop counter. Stan was pleasantly surprised to see it, though he simply claimed he ‘didn’t know it still worked’.

His fingers were still tapping to the frisky beat when Stan emerged back from the gift shop door, clearly from a finished tour.

“Kid, you got someone,” Stan smiles, opening the door wider. An avid yet charming young man, dressed keenly with his hair messily ran back, steps in beside the senior.

“Heya, Dip-per,” Bill practically chuckles, sounding like he was having fun butchering up the boy’s nickname into two mismatched syllables, “What’s good?”

A rock plunges down his gut as Dipper stared at Bill, whose presence was like a forest fire in the room. Bill grinned back.

“Grunkle Stan,” Dipper coughs, stiff as he emerged from behind the counter, “can you, uh, excuse us for a moment?”

Stan shrugs. “Not a problem,” but before he can say the last few letters, Dipper has grabbed Bill from the doorstep and dragged him beyond the Employee’s Only door, leaving it squeaking in its small swings.

“Unbelievable,” Dipper sputtered once they got into the hallway leading from the foot of the stairs going to the kitchen. His hands felt shaky all of a sudden. However he tries, he can’t sound mad or at least dejected – he just doesn’t feel like it right now. “Good job, Bill, now Stan knows about you – “ he looks Bill from head to toe, finding he had to adjust in a certain way from the demon’s glowing triangular form now that he’s back in the fetching form of the vessel. “ – dammit, I’ve implied you were a girl, now what’s he gonna think – “ it seems Bill is finding his rant hilarious, judging by how the side of his dainty mouth won’t stop smirking, “ – you should damn well hope he understands that the guy you’re riding is genderqueer or at least _believes_ it – “

“I’m more than willing to make that real.”

Dipper shakes his head in little jerks, gnawing his bottom lip. “You idiot – “ he stammers, “Stan saw you, jeez, you talked to him and – “ at this point, he could hardly care less; he seizes Bill in an unexpectedly tight, knitted hug, crumpling the back of the demon’s dress shirt with his fist as he digs his chin in the crook of his shoulder, “ – thank you,” Dipper says behind a plop of blond waves, “you idiot, thank you.”

It takes a few moments for Bill to respond to the hug, but it doesn’t last long, because Dipper has already pulled back. There’s a big chance that the boy didn’t feel the reciprocation.

There’s no way to doubt the electric feeling coursing through his arms, looking back again at Bill. The demon himself was dazed, if not a bit confused. Fuck, he realizes he just _hugged a demon,_ but really, Dipper doesn’t feel as awkward as he should; it sure didn’t feel normal, but he felt like he must. It’s Bill’s turn to stare at him, seemingly unable to respond properly. The boy’s face muscles contract to flash him a complicated grin, as if to add, ‘you know what I’m thanking you for.’

There are so many things he still wants to say; _that was my best dream in ages, at first I thought you wouldn’t actually do it but you really did, you don’t understand how happy I am now,_ but he guesses that it’s not the time for such words, not yet.

Bill sucks in a breath, then he’s back to his usual goofy-impish expression. “Reckon you enjoyed your little flashback?” He says, and with it, the atmosphere diffuses, “Well buckle up, I’m not here to look pretty. We’ve got somewhere to go, kid.”

“Somewhere?” Dipper asks, sounding lost, “You didn’t tell me about this – “

“Because it’s a surprise. Go lace up some boots, you finally look presentable.”

Ignoring the almost-insult remark about his dark orange plaid and greyish jeans, Dipper continues, “Look, Stan was really worried I was gone the other day, I don’t think he’ll just let me go out so easily.”

Bill waves it off. “Once I tell that old timer where we’re headed, he’ll get you off cashier duty for the rest of the day. Now put on some mudcakers.”

Dipper still isn’t entirely sure why he does go upstairs and digs up his pair from beneath the bed, but when he goes back downstairs and into the gift shop, Stan is leaning against the counter while Bill pokes at the bobble heads beside the travel pamphlets. When the senior sees him, he gives him a fond look, all crinkly eyes.

“If I knew this earlier, I’d have told you. All right, you can go, but you have to be back by two in the afternoon, and you have to call when you get there, okay?”

Dipper momentarily glances at Bill, who was avoiding his gaze. “Will do, Grunkle Stan.”

Stan marches them to the door, Bill hopping out ahead of them. Before Dipper can step foot out of the shack, Stan grips his forearm tightly and smiles, “It’s nice to see you’ve got friends. Be safe.”

The boy nods, trying to look as reassuring as he can.

Once he catches up to Bill, they wait until Stan has shut the door. They walk until they’re a couple of yards into the forest, secluded from any window of the Mystery Shack.

“You better have not done something,” Dipper tells him. Bill just laughs.

“I can assure you that all I did was open my mouth,” and Bill takes their hands, mumbling a few foreign phrases Dipper has begun to memorize.

 

 

The first thing Dipper hears is a gunshot, and he flinches so hard, his hands are torn away from Bill the moment they’ve arrived. He has no time to recover from the woozy, swaying sensation that began from his toes to his fingertips. It has been replaced with alarm.

“Relax, kid. Those gunshots ain’t for you.”

“Where the hell did you bring us?” Dipper gasps, looking around the dense, mossy stretch of tall pine and thick fern. Wherever they were, it was very deep in the forest. Dipper could no longer see the mountains when he craned his neck, only tiny specks of white sky through the trees’ leaves.

A gunshot rings through again. Dipper didn’t react as much, but it did push down harder at the brick in his gut, and he found himself snatching Bill’s wrist.

“Is this a hunting ground, you ass?”

“Almost,” Bill causally replies. They begin walking, the forest achingly silent after those two loud, sharp bangs. When Dipper notices he’s making too much noise with his boots, he walks a lot more carefully, but meanwhile Bill just continues jamming his feet through the forest floor. The boy was too tense to tell him off.

A few solid minutes into their walk, if Dipper squinted, he could catch a portion of the forest where there were certainly less trees. Throughout their journey, the gunshots stopped roughly five minutes ago, which was starting to bug Dipper, because there had been a forty-five second interval between every bang that got louder. Bill slowed them down as they peeked in through the barks.

Then Dipper felt something pressed against the back of his head.

His entire body locked up; the chilly air of the forest was dry ice in his lungs. The only moment he realized someone was behind him was when a low, gritty voice spoke from his back.

“Hands up,” it said.

“Bill,” he gulps, leaving his hold on the demon’s wrist and obeying. He saw Bill turn, watched his eyes widen as if he’d expected this to happen, and put on a business-like grin. Dipper swallowed. What, is he going to shake this person’s hand next?

“Big gun you got there, lady,” Bill drawled, “trust me, you don’t want to shoot.”

 _Bill you idiot shut the fuck up_ , Dipper internally screeched, but his spine only went taut when the muzzle of the big gun (a hunting shotgun, he thought with terror) dug in harder, driving into his skull.

“L-Look,” he stutters, “we’ll be going, just – just don’t hurt us.”

For a handful of agonizing seconds, it was just Dipper staring at Bill, scared for his life, and that was speaking volumes since he’s never actually valued it until now, while the demon was as calm as a leaf in summer, looking amiably between the person who had a shotgun pointed into his head. They seemed to be having a non-verbal communication; Bill was raising his brows, his nose wrinkled and twitched, he gave tiny, curt nods.

And just as quickly as it was there, the gun is withdrawn from his head and a hot wave of relief crashes into him, and no, it’s not magic, because seconds later the voice speaks again, and this time, he recognizes it. “…Dipper?”

Something like a huge hunk of metal clatters to the ground. With a pang in his chest, he says, “Wendy?”

A quivering hand grips on his shoulder and tugs him around. Wendy is not the Wendy he thought he knew. She looked as if she didn’t get much sleep last night, much less the night before that. Her fiery tassels of thick, red hair fell over her shoulders like it had been accidentally undone from a tight bun. There was a small cut just below her jawline and she smelled of skin and cider. Her sea-green flannel was crumpled as if she had slept in it. Earmuffs hugged her neck and on the left leg of her patched jeans was a fruit knife. She looked to have spent her morning hours here to escape weariness, yet her briskly green eyes were bright and clear, the wide grin on her face showed she hadn’t been as ecstatic as this in a long time.

She gave off the telltale air of someone who did great things – the small town girl who took on her lonely world without ever looking back.

Paper moments passed, where Dipper and Wendy took each other in, oblivious to the other man just beside the boy, then it’s broken, because all of a sudden Wendy energetically pounces on Dipper, and the boy almost sways off balance if he didn’t grip her at the waist with a surprised yelp.

“Dipper, oh my god, I didn’t know it was you!” She beams once she’s back on her own feet, hands still on the boy’s shoulders, “I’m so sorry, oh hell, I didn’t recognize you _at all_ , dude!” Then she raises her fist, and she almost looks like she was going to punch him (Dipper heard a rustle of footsteps from Bill behind him) before she called for a fist bump. Dipper weakly pelted his own knuckles against hers.

“What are you – why do you have a gun – I look different, yeah, but – “

And Wendy’s entire face lights up. Yes, it’s still the same awed look he’s been used to, the same unbelievably beautiful features so well-mixed into her assertive yet laid-back personality. Dipper breathes it all in.

“’Different’ doesn’t begin to touch it! Man, you got _tall._ ” The girl ruffles Dipper’s hair to emphasize it, muttering something along the lines of the boy getting a haircut, or if he doesn’t want to he should at least brush it. “Not that I’m saying the last time I saw you, you were short – okay I totally meant that but really, you were just a widdle munchkin – “

“Okay, stop,” Dipper laughs, feeling a plucking sensation in his chest.

Wendy raises a brow. “I ain’t close to done, dude. I haven’t seen you in years,” she then pinched Dipper’s chin, and he’s reminded how he can’t grow a beard to save his life.

“Me too,” he replies, still unable to stop smiling at her.

Bill silently watches from behind the boy.

“Hey, anyway, how’d you find me?” Wendy continues. “Oh no, did my little bro spit it out to you? Dammit, I told him to stop doing that, sorry, I’ll give you back your ten bucks from that sneaky lil shit – “

“We totally did that,” Bill spoke up. Dipper is essentially reminded that he was still there.

Wendy’s eyes shift to Bill, and it’s clear she’s slightly taken aback, looking at the young man’s face in a different circumstance.

“Name’s Bill, by the way.”

She easily slips into casual, holding out her fist bump-ready hand to Bill without question. “Yo, as you’ve heard, I’m Wendy.”

Bill returns the fist bump rather stiffly, but she didn’t seem to notice, stooping back down to pick up her shotgun, dusting the earth off it and slinging it back on her chest. Everything, from her forested shirt to her muddy boots, reminded Dipper of soldiers.

“So, uh,” Dipper starts, “what’s with this ‘cabin in the woods’ vibe you’re currently on?”

“Oh, this?” She pats the gun, “I’m target practicing, see that clearing there? I started about two years ago. Began sport hunting with my dad. Really, I always took off with a .22 caliber until my dad decided that if I’m gonna ‘steal honey from bears’ I’m gonna have to do it right, and with a guardian. Currently, he doesn’t know I’m here. Good thing he’s somewhere in the lumbering parts of the woods.” She then gives Dipper a thumbs-up. There’s the Wendy he knows. Also, he’s a lot more terrified of Manly Dan. Manly Dan with an axe? Serviceable. Manly Dan with a shotgun?

“It’s been a long time since I held Snuggy, I only came back about two days ago.”

It took Dipper a while to put two and two together that ‘Snuggy’ was her gun and not a rabbit.

“Hey, I’ll fill you in on details, but you guys wanna seize the day first?”

“You bet your ass I do,” Bill says with a startling amount of passion. “Say, red. Let’s demonstrate some aim?”

“Oh ho ho,” Wendy grins, “Where’d you learn, buddy?”

“Dimension 52,” he answers with swaggering confidence.

“Awesome, but,” and Wendy winks, stepping toward Bill and ridiculously feigning disapproval. “ugh, sorry man, I can’t really let you shoot around here without a permit so _let’s totally do it_.”

Once again, Dipper finds himself between the antics of another girl and Bill, and he can’t really point out what’s worse – Bill and Wendy agreeing with each other so quickly because of their similar troublemaker trait, Wendy having the thinnest set of morality and ethics and letting Bill hold a handgun, or watching Bill take hold of said handgun (that Wendy apparently had wedged in the back of her jeans) and shoot all ten targets in the bullseye from one axis. Wendy applauds before subtly taking the gun back from him while Dipper cowers from a tree stump, his earmuffs nuzzling his neck.

“I like your moxie,” Wendy congratulates, clapping Bill’s shoulder.

“Red, would it be taxing for you if Pine Tree over here gets some experience? He seems real eager,” Bill all but sneers, eyeing Dipper with a smug smile.

Dipper swallows.

“Dip, wanna try?” Wendy invites, waving the gun in her hand. Something about her smile says she’s sincerely ready to teach him if ever he did want to and not just for simple kicks.

He closes his eyes, muttering an ‘okay’. In his head, a little voice tells him his faith is sealed.

“Right, we got some firearm etiquette here. You have to swear never to point this thing at anyone, including yourself. However, you can go nuts on those woodboards over there,” she jerks a thumb at the hole-ridden targets ten feet away, “This is purely sport, dude. No pressure.”

Dipper heaves out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “I swear, Wendy.”

“That’s my Dip.” She takes off her gloves and gives them to Dipper, then hands him the gun. The boy is getting shaky just feeling its wood and metal in his palms.

“Relax, dude,” he hears Wendy speak from beside him as he studies gripping the weapon, holding it in both his hands, standing with feet apart. She was so close, Dipper could smell her hair. She took his hands, putting his fingers in place, mumbling about everything being comfortable and proper for him before telling him to straighten his shoulders. Dipper can’t stop the butterflies from fluttering in his stomach. “Now focus on your aim and angle. Hold it steady. When you shoot, there’s gonna be a recoil and it will be sick, but you have to hold the gun good and tight or else it might be bad. Stretch out your arms. Focus, you can do this. Earmuffs,” she then fixed them over his ears and stepped back.

Dipper mentally counted; _one, two, three._

The sharp bang is still loud beyond the earmuffs, but what’s worse was indeed the recoil; being inexperienced, an excruciating vibration forced through his flesh from his fingertips to his shoulders and his arm flew up about a foot, but luckily, the gun stayed in his ringing hands. He quickly set the weapon down to his knees, entire body pumping and pulsing with his breaths. The joints of his shoulders thrummed unpleasantly.

He looked off to his target. He had shot it from five feet away. On the fourth ring, a new hole had been torn through.

“Fantastic,” Bill pipes up. Dipper snaps his head toward him, and the least he expected was for Bill to be wearing the best bitch face he’d seen since Pacifica Northwest’s. “You have the aim of a fish out of water.”

“It’s my first try,” Dipper weakly defends, however he himself thought he didn’t do quite good. The new hole in the target board was subtly mocking.

“It’s your angle, kid. Red said something about that already,” and before Dipper could say anything else, Bill has walked toward him and an imposing air cradles the both of them. Bill’s presence is like lightning strike, gripping and important. “Hold it like this – “ and he nudges Dipper’s wrists to bend down a bit of lower and impatiently tapped at his forearms, telling him to go straighter. Bill kicks at his ankle with a snappy whisper of balancing his body evenly, and Dipper has a harder time regulating his breaths as the demon’s chest lay still and snug against his back, Bill’s hands wrapping over his own as he tried to seek for the right height at which to fire. Slender fingers folded over his knuckles and a steady thumb lay still over the side of his hand. Against his neck were concentrated breaths and the light brush of lips.

How the hell could he focus now? His eyes stray to Wendy. She has a hand over her mouth, but the deep wrinkle of her eyes show she was doing her best to keep in a laugh.

If Wendy made him feel butterflies, Bill left the buzzing sensation of hummingbirds swooping. His chest heaved, and if he wasn’t so focused on the target, he’d have felt the twitch of those lips into a smirk.

Bill eases his finger over his on the trigger.

 _Bang!_ The ever-stinging recoil shot through his arms but the gun only flickered; Bill had held it as if he were granite. Bill looked up from his shoulder, and blinking away the pain, Dipper looked at the woodboard. A new hole had been punctured through the line between the first and the second circle.

Bill made a happy sound from the back of his throat, finally slipping away from Dipper and bringing the handgun with him. A shudder rocked the boy’s torso as the strong presence left.

“Nice work, you two,” Wendy spoke, saying the words to Bill but looking at Dipper. Bill gave her the gun and she stuck it back in her jeans. She walks toward the boy and rubs his back.

“Was it great, dude?”

Dipper smiles brokenly at her. “I like hitting targets, but I’d never hold a gun anymore.”

Wendy laughs, gripping his forearm. “Man, at least I know that part of you didn’t change.”

 

 

Wendy’s house turned out to be not so far away; she knew a certain route that ‘made thirty minutes feel like eight’ and once they’ve arrived, she went into the tool shed and unhooked a wooden bow that appeared to be handcrafted from the wall (which was mostly hung with lumbering equipment). Fetching its set of arrows from among the hunks of firewood, Wendy handed them to Bill, saying “anything that’s not the house or the tulip garden is fair game, go nuts”. Once the young man was safely away trying to shoot archery arrows at a dart board, Wendy tugs Dipper into the house. They go for the kitchen, the place with a window overlooking the backyard, where Bill was.

As she made coffee and reheated blueberry muffins (“My dad loves baking,” she explained), Dipper asked to use the phone and called Grunkle Stan, telling him where he was. After getting an earful of ‘be back by two’ and ‘be safe, kid’, Dipper was back in the kitchen and Wendy insisted he sit down.

“So, how’s life?” She asks, pushing Dipper his mug. The boy didn’t know how such simple question could be difficult to answer.

“You go first, man,” he prods instead. “Last time I heard about you, you were off to some college three states over.”

“Yeah. Believe it or not, I took criminology,” she indicates with a hint of pride. Dipper stares at her. “I’m actually thinking of getting into the military. What do you think? When I told dad, he cried.”

“Woah,” Dipper remarks. “So that’s why you know how to shoot, huh.”

“And why I let pretty boy over there take a gun; I can beat it out of him.”

The boy chuckles. “And I’d never thought that one day I’d be afraid of you. Pretty funny, you took up something defending the law and you just taught a bunch of unauthorized people how to shoot a gun.”

“Well duh, I’m Wendy, it’s bound to happen. Besides, at least you know that you won’t be shooting guns soon.”

Ah, still same old her. Dipper felt another strong pulse of gratitude for Bill.

Wendy then silently reached out, gripping his forearm across the table.  Eyes scanning over her, she had a solemn expression on her face.

“Hey, I heard,” she begins, “I’m very sorry, about your sister.”

“It’s okay,” Dipper mumbles, not expecting the topic to come up. He felt the grip go tighter.

“It’s just,” she sighs, “I know from your look that it really did something. But Dip, remember, you’re not alone,” Wendy smiled. “I mean, we all loved her, who couldn’t? She was my friend too. It’s hard to imagine a world without her, and I know for your case, it’s harder to live in it.”

Dipper got a short glimpse of the few days after her funeral – waking up, knowing she’s no longer in her room, eating breakfast in the morning with a blank space beside him, knowing that no amount of calling or door knocking can fill that chair.

He shuts his eyes and fights it off the best he can. “Thank you, Wendy.”

“No problem, dude. But anyway,” and she leans back again, casually hiking her feet back up on the table. “Be honest, Dip. Who’s the guy currently shooting arrows at a dart board?”

The dull thud of said arrow hitting the target softly came from outside.

“He’s a friend,” Dipper hastily answers, gripping the handle of his mug.

“’Friend’ my ass,” Wendy chuckles. “You’re smart and all, but you’re a terrible liar.”

Dipper’s shoulders fall. Sometimes, he forgets just how alike she and Stan are. Wendy isn’t oblivious, he reminds himself. She’s seen shit and she can see shit.

“I know there’s a story, kid. Get telling.”

“All right, wanna know how we got to your shooting range so quick? Teleportation. You chant this Latin-Creole verse that basically means ‘get us the fuck over there’.”

“Uhuh, and?”

“And you can’t use the spell if you’re not human, but you can bring humans with you. I was with Bill.”

Wendy stares heavily at him.

“Remember my sister’s ‘sock opera’ puppet play thing?”

“Oh _shit_ ,” she mutters. “That’s why you looked so pale back in there when I gave him the gun, yeesh.”

“Exactly. He’s possessing someone, a singer-turned-stripper, from what I can remember.”

“Explains why he’s hot,” Wendy shrugs. Dipper goes a little pink.

“Not the point – “

“Kinda the point,” she sneers.

“Whatever. Really, the guy should have thought better than to let some crazy brain demon get inside him, but who knows how desperate he probably was.”

“Welp, if he was so far gone he’d let a demon use his body, I guess he was pretty desperate.”

Dipper shook his head. “I’d feel sorry for the guy. I know that it’s a dick move and Bill’s probably destroying someone’s life, but I can’t really afford enough concern for that now.”

“Why’d you say so?”

“Bill isn’t here to wear snappy clothes,” Dipper revealed. “He has this plan to ‘fix’ me. He said one day, I’m going to be of use, and he needs my soul in ‘good condition’ or else I can’t serve as a token for him or some shit, so he’s trying to repair me.”

“What has he done so far?”

Dipper sips his coffee. “Well, excusing the parts where he didn’t know where to hit, he just did something amazing.”

“And what’s that?”

“Good dreams, Wendy. Good dreams.”

She nods, but pretty soon, Wendy was tense for a few silent moments before she mutters, “He’s done something, didn’t he?”

“Depends, what?”

Wendy narrows her eyes at him. “Wrong word, I mean, _you’ve_ done something, haven’t you?”

Dipper felt cornered; however he puts it, he was just never good in keeping secrets, or defending for himself. He couldn’t find enough voice to say anything. If Wendy was actually righteous, she’d make a good lawyer with this.

“He’s kissed you,” Wendy slowly says. “Holy fucking shit, Dipper Pines.”

“I know – “

“You _know?_ ” Wendy scoffs. _“_ Dude, when you kiss him, you’re kissing someone else you’ve never even met – “

“I _know_ , okay?” Dipper bites his lip. “It’s wrong, I know. But that person’s soul isn’t in there, not right now. It’s just Bill, and technically, it’s just a body, not a person.”

Wendy gulps; he sees it, how she leans away an inch. It’s not until he listens to his own words in his head did he realize how disturbing that sounded.

“I’m sorry,” Dipper hesitates, his eyes searching Wendy’s face. “That was just wrong. I’m sorry.”

“Dude.”

 “…But have you ever wanted to be numb?” Guilt softly twists in his chest. “Bill, he…he makes me feel nothing, and God knows that sometimes, I wish I couldn’t feel a damn thing.”

Dipper steals a glance at the window. Outside, Bill is taking arrows out from a tree bark, which he’s shot a perfect line into.

“Well,” she muses, “as long as Bill is in that body, I sure hope you get to feel something worth feeling soon.”

“Wendy?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you, um, are you – ?”

“What, seeing someone?”

Dipper lowers his head. These words were said with a private smile.

“He’s great,” Wendy says. “Awesome, actually. He’d never back down from a debate, he makes the best grilled cheese sandwiches, likes the smell of my pumpkin spice candles. Really, it’s hard to think we’ve been a thing for three years.”

He gazed at Wendy once more. The beautiful girl was now a dream he had woken up from.

His eyes stray to the window, sipping at his mug. Maybe there was his reality.

 

 

At 1:46, after Wendy and Dipper had a short, witty exchange of whether the vessel’s soul could feel anything from whatever Bill was doing with his body, Dipper finally remarked that he and Bill had to leave.

Outside, Bill was picking up an astray arrow from the ground. Sweat made his neck and face glisten, a curious sight under a sunless forest sky.

“Thanks so much for visiting me,” she went on as they exited into the backyard. “It’s nice seeing you after so long, dude.”

“You have no idea how happy I am to see you, too,” Dipper smiles.

“Oh, here, by the way,” she then takes a candy wrapper from the pits of her pocket and a pen from the front pocket of her plaid. On it, she hastily scribbled a pair of numbers.

“This first one is my cell, the second one is my house phone for here. I’ll be staying in Gravity Falls for the rest of the summer, so if you ever want to talk to me, please don’t hesitate. We’re pals, dude. Always. Actually, if you see some development with pretty boy over there, give me a call.” She pressed it into his palm.

Dipper folds it neatly and stuffed it in his jeans’ pocket. “I’ll remember.”

When Wendy pulled him into a tight, lingering hug, he held her steadily, burying his head into the long, thick mane of red hair he never knew he missed so much. As she pulls back, he feels tapping at his shoulder. It’s Bill, the wooden bow at rest in his side.

“Thanks for the bow and arrow, red,” Bill chimes. It’s weird, hearing a demon say ‘thank you’ or even be casually grateful towards someone. Maybe it’s the humanity seeping in. “You guys able to catch up?”

Despite himself, Dipper beamed at him.

 

 

The boy found himself slightly more eager to say the few phrases of the teleportation spell that brought them back to the shack. Once there, Stan looked more than relieved to see them back before two in the afternoon.

“How’d it go, kiddos?” Stan welcomes them. Dipper watched Bill wrinkle his nose at being called ‘kiddo’.

“It went well. Great, actually.”

“Wendy’s really a good kid,” the senior confides, “y’know, sometimes I miss her. Hah! Who knew I’d miss having a shady, slacking teenager as a cashier, oh man. Really wish she used ‘em quick fingers to play an instrument and not to rob banks – okay!” He clasps his hands together, “There’s another tour bus, boys. Gotta milk these fuckers good. Back behind the cashier, kid, and you – “ he points to Bill, “What you say your name was again?”

“’Name’s Bill,” the demon grins, all teeth.

 _Shit,_ Dipper thinks, breath catching halfway between his throat and mouth. The quickest name that comes in mind to in the least conceal Bill’s identity rolls off his tongue rather sheepishly.

“It’s actually William,” Dipper asserts, “Bill’s just a nickname.” The look Bill sent his way could have boiled the Pacific Ocean into nothing but bone-dry sea floor. Dipper bit his inner cheek.

“Just call me Bill,” he presses on, tone sharply saccharine. Stan was oblivious to the silent warfare that just transpired beyond his perception.

“Alright, Bill,” Stan notes, making his way out the door, “try not to destroy anything. I have a feeling you’ve got grabby hands. Pick up a broom or something.”

Then he leaves, slamming the door behind him.

The air thickens and Dipper can’t breathe; he’s immediately cornered by Bill, who walks straight into the counter and suddenly grabs him by the collar before slamming him against the wall, making pictures and hanging shelves clatter dangerously. At first, Dipper had the terrifying thought that he had caused Bill to be enraged, but upon inspecting closer, focusing beyond the sudden heat, the demon’s face was red with a blush fought in vain to keep at bay. Bill looked extremely frustrated whilst he worried his lower lip, and as that gaze of liquid fire he knew all too well nailed him to the wall, those delicate hands crumpled all the way to his shoulders, tightly yet clumsily holding him in place.

“Never,” Bill growls, inching their faces closer, and Dipper watches that darling little tongue move underneath pristine teeth, “ _never_ call me that, unless you want to be fucked like a hare, Pine Tree.”

Bill was on the verge of slamming their mouths together, but like a predator denying himself the helpless prey, Bill simply ran his tongue over his own lip before biting it, as if he was chastising himself, sent one more of those shaky looks into Dipper, and pushed off. His shoulders were trembling, he even looked quite a bit embarrassed, before he made his way across the shop and picked up the broom in the corner and walked out, surely to sweep the front porch.

And that’s how Dipper found out Bill had a fetish.

Surprisingly enough, things between he and Bill seemed to cave in after that. It was like a truce that evened them out, at least for Dipper. For the rest of the day, he’d flash this stupid, shit-eating grin at Bill whenever he caught his eye, and the demon would give him the most outrageous glare, but it was hard to be scared of it when his entire face goes a deep shade of red.

Dipper tried not to remember the last time he was this annoying towards someone.

During the next week or so, Bill regularly kept coming back. It only took Dipper a few days to start expecting him; hell, even Stan began getting used to the “nicely dressed fella” coming around; Bill has that magnetic attitude of a chatty-suave, young businessman. He always came in flashy outfits with overtones of black and gold, most of which Dipper recognized from their shopping spree. Sometimes, he’d dab on a bow tie.

Each day, he stayed a little longer, subtly helping Dipper in his hours manning the gift shop. There are times when the boy would catch him helping out customers, even trying to get some merchandise sold (“You totally need these fine ol’ tapestries of me,” he had once insisted to an old lady admiring a dusty stock of rolled-up wall quilts, which were deep red and had a gold triangle-eye design. The old lady took three). When Dipper happened to blabber this bit to Stan over breakfast, the very next day, Stan pinned a nametag on Bill’s shirt and declared he was hired.

“We need more liars up in here,” he openly chuckled, shoving a makeshift employee’s form underneath Bill’s nose. Dipper got a few glances at Bill filling it up. The only thing he caught him writing, in quick yet elegant scrawl was _William “Bill“ J-_ while the age in the other corner read 23, before Bill waved him away with a thin-lipped scowl.

Only that night did he hear while eating pizza with Stan that he was actually looking for someone to work in the shack with him after the last part-time employee nicked a whole day’s sales from inside the cashier. Stan’s only defense was “if he’s trying to sell my shit, then he ain’t trying to rob me”. Dipper vaguely hoped he was right.

Needless to say, Bill was thrilled to be spending his hours in the gift shop with Dipper. Bill only joined them once for a meal, and this was the same dinner after which Stan thought it good if they stayed up late to marathon all seasons of Ductective. Halfway through season two, Stan was crying on the yellow couch whilst Bill had eaten all the snacks and pizza, and was half passed-out on the floor beside Dipper, making the sleepy boy get a noseful of soft, heady waves, feeling steady breathing against his chest. Neither Dipper nor Bill remembered it happening.

 The next few days after that, while Bill sat on top of the counter of an empty gift shop, Dipper aimlessly tapping at a bobble head figure, Stan emerged from the Employee’s Only door to announce, slightly out of breath, that they must run to the grocery store.

“We’re officially out of everything,” Stan falters. He pushed a list into Dipper’s hand, along with a hundred and fifty bucks. “Go on, take the car. That is, if you still want pancakes for breakfast tomorrow.” And just before Dipper can think Stan was being careless again, the senior gripped at his forearm before he stepped inside the old convertible and said, “Back by eight, kid. Be safe.”

Just before he completely drives off, Stan hollered something about Bill keeping a close watch on Dipper.

In the grocery, Bill still had not worn off that tendency of being childish. When they passed by a tiny kid of about four seated in the cart of her mom, Bill pushed an urgently flailing hand in between Dipper’s face and a stick of butter (he had been choosing between that and margarine) and firmly stated, voice snappy and strict, “Pine Tree, I demand to sit in the cart.”

Dipper gracelessly stared at him. “What.”

“I demand to sit in the cart,” Bill pressed on, looking him straight in the eye.

“Dude, what the fuck, you’re a grown-ass man.”

“I _demand_ to _sit_ in the cart,” Bill fussed even more forcefully. It’s like watching a little match stammer in the wind. “And I’m not a man, I’m a being of pure energy.”

Dipper sharply exhaled through his nose. “Okay, fine, but how will you get in,” and at the end, he couldn’t muster up enough intonation to make that an interrogative statement because he internally blanches on how he had just _considered_ that request.

“No problemo,” Bill says, and Dipper may or may not have forgotten that yup, this dude is tall and agile, and dance-stripping on a pole includes having flawless control over one’s weight. Bill hikes his foot up a shelf and lands smoothly inside the cart. He sat squarely against the wider end while his legs were bent, surrounded by things like pancake syrup, coffee, creamer, sugar, two bread loaves, cartons of orange juice, carrots, packs of ramen and tissue paper, while on his face was the most triumphant expression.

On his way to get a carton of eggs, people stared at them. It was indeed a strange yet captivating sight; a guy in an old hoodie pushing a cart that had a gently charming young man sitting in it, mostly surrounded by noodles. Dipper tries to ignore the stubborn stares, picking a carton and putting it in Bill’s lap.

“Careful,” he warned, wheeling them into the shampoo aisle. Astonishingly enough, Bill sits a lot more still.

“What if humans hatched from eggs,” he mused, while Dipper grabbed a shampoo bottle.

“Stop,” Dipper said, but he was hiding his smile behind his sleeve. Bill took the shampoo bottle, clicked it open, and sniffed at it while Dipper pushed them into a cashier lane.

“Ah,” the demon snapped the shampoo bottle shut, “so that’s where it comes from.”

The boy piled all their items up the counter. He could see the cashier, a pug-faced, lanky man in his late twenties, snicker the whole while.

“You gonna include your twink?” The cashier person leered, finishing up with their items and bagging.

“Hey,” Bill smiled, “if I wasn’t enjoying my seat, I’d have decked you in the face, you hear, buddy?”

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” Dipper immediately interjected, “Bill, shut up.”

Bill continued to narrow his eyes at the cashier until they’ve left the grocery’s premises, pulling out into the parking lot, which was already quite dark. The lamps have been lit. Bill was now surrounded by big paper bags.

“I sat his pant leg on fire,” the demon laughs once they’ve reached the car, and Dipper was heaving their bags into the trunk. “I wonder how long it’ll take him to notice.”

Dipper slammed the trunk shut. “The only thing wrong about it was that he said it like it’s a bad thing,” he sighed, “or that he implied something like – you know, and said it as if it was a bad thing.”

“Heh, I just didn’t like the smug look on his face.”

And there came a silent handful of moments, Bill subtly picking at the knee of his pants. It was a soft sight; Dipper got a mild sense of déjà vu, seeing that Bill’s figure, like everything in the parking lot, was washed gently in orange lamp light, a detached scene from the night he stayed parked underneath the streetlamp outside the baby-blue apartment. The wind skimmed faintly, catching the lock of wavy hair hanging from one side of Bill’s face, making it sweep.

This young man he hardly knew truly was beautiful, Dipper thought.

He’ll try to avoid answering why Bill was starting to become that.

“Hey,” the boy called, leaning back against the trunk, “that…that day after you showed me the memory of my sister,” and he watched Bill’s serene, deep gaze flicker up to his, “I said thank you, and I meant it.”

He flashed him a small smile. Bill smiled back.

“Just doing what I’m here for, Pine Tree.”

Dipper doesn’t understand meaningful looks when he gets them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: The complete version of Philia is as follows:
> 
> Philia: friendship love
> 
> Ex. Wendy Corduroy, Pacifica Northwest, Multibear, Tyrone
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to every reader that cried. You deserve this, and I can't wait to see you all next chapter.


	7. Adore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eros: passionate, sexual love
> 
> Ex. Bill Cipher

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This is late as hell and I’m very sorry, I had a lot of projects and papers to turn in this week, I was just so busy along with this senior high pressure. *sighs* I do love writing this, but I get tired sometimes. Luckily this chapter is supposed to be shorter than usual.
> 
> Please read this chapter slowly; pay attention.
> 
> The (less detailed) smut that I’ve originally planned for chapter three is here, with completely different purpose. It’s on the last scene. I’ve made it as plot-relevant as I can so it can still be readable, but you’ll be the judge. I leave a lot to the imagination. Warning for Bottom!Bill.

**Chapter 7**

The dashboard clock reads a little after seven-thirty when Bill asks to stop the car. Dipper slowly halts to the side where a streetlamp flickered while Bill fumbled with the radio. They were on their way back to the shack from the grocery run; the sky was well-darkened and moonless. Soon, a snazzy, playful 60’s beat drowned over the soft gurgle of the parked engine.

Without another word, Bill steps out the pavement. He looked softly bleached underneath orange light, an augur figure of crisp-cuffed shirt and leather shoes.

“What are you doing?” Dipper calls, looking out through the window shield.

“Jeez, take a hint, kid. We gonna dance or what?”

Dumbstruck, with a sprightly song belting away, Dipper’s hands stayed stuck on the wheel. Outside, Bill rolls his eyes with a small laugh. “Just get outta the car, bucko.”

Deciding it’ll go nowhere if he just sat in there, Dipper gets out of the driver’s seat, walking towards the demon. Now it really felt surreal, standing underneath the light of a streetlamp with Bill, who reaches out his open hands.

“I’m taller than you,” Dipper states, making to hold them.

“By an inch,” Bill grips and drags him to the middle of the street, “and I’m the guy here who knows how to dance.”

“Why are we doing this again?”

Bill up close has never struck Dipper as wonderfully. He still carried a forest-fire presence, and he touching him quietly burned his senses. At the fleeting moments where Bill stepped closer to hold his waist and stretch out their arms, Dipper tries to deny the whooping hummingbirds in his stomach and instead focuses on not breathing too hard.

“I was in your mindscape, right? I saw a memory of you standing alone in a gym with lots of people and pink lights, while this girl in dark green was walking away from you.”

Oh. Prom.

Dipper shrugs off the haunting memory with a shudder. Looking directly at Bill, not just the side of his eyebrow like he usually did to avoid looking at the sun, was blinding enough to sink the memory back in the ocean.

The frisky tune aligns with how Bill steps his feet, urging Dipper to follow, yet his legs were stiff and moved awkwardly; he only succeeded in stumbling over his own feet. “I don’t really know how – “

“It’s why I’m here. Now shut up and dance with me.”

At first, Dipper hesitates. He had given up learning how to dance after that night, but now, with Bill’s steady grip and watchful eye, he gets swayed by the music and the swift, agile swerves of each stroke. He has Bill counting under his breath, _five, six, seven, eight_ and _eight, seven, six, five._ His own feet start to step side to side by themselves, his limbs twist smoothly along with Bill’s, and soon, he finds himself grinning with each step he makes.

Under the light of the streetlamp, their gazes twinkle as they pick up the pace. There was a playful struggle for dominance; Bill made a flustered Dipper twirl over his arm with a little smirk. In turn, Dipper clinched his step quickly and cleverly enough to make Bill slightly trip over his feet.

But this trip has consequences. Bill did lose balance, falling into Dipper’s chest, and for an electric moment the demon’s weight hung over his arms, but this clashed with their current rhythm and they both clumsily toppled into each other, resulting in a heap of limbs on the pavement. Their legs tangled, and Bill’s shoulder pushed into Dipper’s nose.

Pretty soon, they’re a laughing mess, all stuttering hands and cold breaths. As Bill struggled to get up, the boy caught a whiff of faint vanilla, which oddly tickled his laughter even more. The old beat was still playing, tapping out it’s outro.

“This is crazy,” he snorts, still in a high he’d never admit, “real damn crazy.”

“A little crazy is good,” Bill smiles, untangling his limbs from Dipper. All the sharp shadows and catching their breaths exhilarated him. He straightens up, heart beating pleasantly quick, while Bill moves to sit against the car’s wheel. He vaguely wonders if this is how happy drunks felt like. Bill pats the space beside him, on the gravelly road, and Dipper scoots back a few feet.

“You didn’t have to, y’know,” he says when they’re seated together. Their arms brush snugly, but Dipper didn’t feel like he should move away.

“I wanted to. It’s just one of the few stuff I was able to fish out of your mindscape before it spat me out. Weird, I was expecting you’d wake up late due to the dream, but what the heck. Chances are, you went through it pretty quick.”

“Guess my head’s still deciding if it likes you,” he jokes.

“Boy, how sweet!” Bill chuckles. “So you’re saying you already like me?”

Dipper pauses, but he was still looking at Bill fondly. “Stop talking, ass.”

“Come on,” Bill presses on, “the human’s definition of self is relative, your head isn’t everything, following the mechanics of souls – “

“I said stop talking,” he outright laughs, smiling stupidly at Bill, because it’s so much better than lying.

 

 

It was three days since the grocery run when Dipper senses that Stan was noticing something.

There was an afternoon where Stan walked into the gift shop with a brisk command of telling Dipper to fix a broken parking sign, but upon being met with the two having a muffled argument, Bill sitting on the counter whilst Dipper leant forward with his head subtly inclined on Bill’s arm, Stan coarsely sputtered ‘never mind’ and promptly left the two alone, passing through the living room and out the back door.

It had taken a while for Dipper to remember this was the very moment Bill had dared to touch a messy lock of his hair and push it back above his ear. Sue him; it’s hard to remember things that happened right before Bill held up a finger to his lips in the middle of him stating his point (“The Book of Revelation is actually plausible”) and distinctly mumbled, “The Book of Revelation is the most massive shit dream ever shat out while God was too high off of cough syrup.”

(Of course, none of it made sense, but their entire argument started with the sodium content of ramen noodles and ended with God getting high on cough syrup, so technically everything they were muttering under their breaths didn’t make sense. Funny, he never noticed; the room tuned out and all he heard was how Bill’s voice went from annoying to calculated while he stressed an idea.)

That very same day, Stan watched as Bill left, and Dipper privately relished at how Bill’s last grip on his wrist lingered while his uncle was in the same room with him. However, the curious look Stan sent his way from Bill’s retreating back wasn’t something he took lightly.

When Bill returned the day after, it’s the first thing he tells him when the gift shop cleared of tourists.

“I see,” Bill muttered, tapping at a bobble head.

Bill didn’t say another word until later that afternoon, about an hour and a half after the last tour bus rolled into the driveway. Bill was sitting on the counter again while Dipper was lining up disheveled merchandise on the shelves, when all of a sudden, Bill urgently calls, “Pine Tree, over here.”

“What?” Dipper answered, turning around. Bill was beckoning him, expression alert, curling two fingers toward himself.

“No time to explain, come,” he insisted.

“I’m exactly four feet away – “

“ _Pine Tree.”_

Dipper huffed, giving in and starting the few steps to Bill, but on his third step, he’s tugged by the wrist, held at the crook of his jaw as Bill sharply angles his head to the left and just as quickly as he called the boy, he’s pushed their lips together in an unruly, unexpectedly deep kiss. With the sudden change of angle, Dipper was too lost to see anything in the room aside from the deep, steady glint of Bill’s eyes from underneath thick lashes.

They pull away slowly, detached from how sudden the kiss began. Dipper’s eyes loom down. He was holding at Bill’s thigh, his fingers digging into pressed, expensive cloth. One of Bill’s hands rested on his shoulder whilst the other cupped his cheek. Dipper glanced at the Employee’s Only door.

It was creaking.

At the night of the grocery run, Stan had asked Bill to eat dinner with them, and ever since then, the young man was entitled to eat meals in the shack with Dipper and the senior. Bill sat across the table from the two Pines.

That day, Stan, without looking Dipper in the eye (he was watching an old movie on the television), tells Bill to stay for lunch.

Entering the kitchen, Stan was already seated across the table, leaving two empty seats beside each other.

“Sit,” Stan said, eyes on his plate. The meal was spent in uncomfortable silence.

When dinner time came, the boy’s face alternated between pale and a stark red, avoiding Stan’s eye the best he could. Whenever his and Bill’s elbows bumped, Dipper could have choked on his food with how tight his throat seized up.

Yet the most peculiar thing happened. When Bill ran off to the living room while Dipper did the dishes, Stan loitered at a kitchen counter. Dipper could feel the senior’s gaze digging into the back of his head like the muzzle of a shotgun.

“Kid,” the senior began.  Dipper almost lets slip of a plate he was soaping up.

“Y-Yes?” He starts rinsing the dishes.

“So, uh,” Stan sheepishly said, “so you and – and him, huh.” His tone was careful, as if he didn’t want Dipper to take it in the wrong way. Dipper braced himself.

“It’s – it’s actually okay,” there was a slight laugh in these words, “I mean, there could’ve been smoother ways for you to have let me know, but there’s nothing wrong with it. Why’d you think I let you sit beside each other?”

At this, Dipper turns back to look at his great uncle. The old man was beaming kindly at him, arms folded over his chest.

“Just, uh, never smooch when there are customers about. Take it from a dude who married a coin machine in Vegas. I’m pretty sure this weird-ass town is gonna start chasing Bill with pitch forks like they chased ‘witches’. Okay? Get a room. All I ask.”

Ignoring the hilarious image of Bill getting trampled on by mindless townspeople, Dipper nods, smiling back at the senior.

“Thanks, Grunkle Stan.”

“Don’t mention it, kid. Now get back to the dishes,” then he jerks his thumb at the doorway, to the direction of the light coming from the living room. The faint sounds of a soap opera opening credits filtered to the kitchen. “The pip ain’t gonna save himself from black and white television.”

Then Stan kicks off, leaving the kitchen, yet he lingered at the doorframe to flash Dipper a warm little grin before going out the hall.

After Dipper finishes with the dishes, drying off his hands with a towel, he fetches a giant pack of caramel-flavored popcorn from inside the cupboard and pours what could fit into a big bowl. He then goes into the living room, balancing the bowl on two arms. Bill is seated with his back against the legs of the couch, squinting with interest at the old movie (not a soap opera, it seemed) playing on the old, curved screen ( _“I may be a duchess, but I’m also a woman!”_ ).

Dipper places the bowl on Bill’s lap. The demon mechanically takes a handful, snuggling up closer to Dipper. A heady portion of wavy hair tickles his ear.

“What’s the title?”

“ _The Duchess Accrues_ , I think,” Bill mumbles, “finally, I found something on that’s black and white. Two minutes in and this mom duchess is a dick. I hope she goes bankrupt.”

And Bill then lays his head on the boy’s shoulder, like it’s the most normal thing in the word. Just as casually, Dipper droops his head over the demon’s.

If Stan came downstairs at around one in the morning, he’d find Dipper slouched for all his being with his head laid on the seat of the couch while the young man was curled up like a cat on the floor, hair a mess of dense waves on Dipper’s lap. On his mouth and fingers were traces of popcorn. The bowl was upturned and empty while a retreating smell of fried sugar and corn kernel clung to the carpet.

They were both asleep, breaths steady at the chest, and Stan would have been blind if he didn’t see Dipper’s hand buried in Bill’s hair, halfway through a brush, gold locks in between slight fingers.

 

 

There came a day when Dipper found that he was starting to like the presence of Bill.

On a bleak afternoon, he realized he liked watching the way Bill fixes his collar, bottom lip pursed in a bite of teeth, or the way he tapped at his nose when he was deep in thought. He liked the way Bill tried to joke, utterly atheistic and crude, and was even more keen of the way Bill excitedly looked at him, waiting for him to get the punchline.

Dipper only stared, and fuck his morbid curiosity because he _gets them_ , but nevertheless, he liked watching Bill laugh, loud and honking, making the cashier counter and its bobble heads rattle.

He realized he found seeing Bill brush his thumb over a smudge of dirt on his shoes endearing. He realized watching Bill try to steal a candy bar from the vending machine, tapping aimlessly at the buttons like a five-year-old, sent something like a jittery feeling warming over his chest. He realized having Bill smile, either those stupid, shit-eating grins or the occasional soft ones he’d send his way when they weren’t alone in the gift shop, also made him smile as well.

He didn’t catch himself having conscious thought and doing it until later, while Stan passed by them eating Froot Loops after five (Bill was tracing patterns at the back of the cereal box with his forefinger, looking very serious). He had been quietly giving Bill a fond look until Stan’s shadow loomed past and he hurriedly started again with his cereal, which had gone soggy with milk.

They did not kiss often. There were moments when they get too close – Bill would touch his cheek and lean in, but his lips only hovered whilst he learned not to look at the boy, before pulling away, going back to caressing the broad pad of where Dipper’s thumb met palm, gazing off at anything but him.

However, maybe once or twice, Bill would subtly sweep his lips on the corner of Dipper’s mouth if no one was looking, which would leave the boy a warm ball of good nerves.

He’d never tell Bill, of course.

But things go awry in Dipper’s train of thought pretty quick. The first time Dipper realized Bill had been placing his hand beside his on the dinner table, just enough for their pinkies to nudge, he wondered why it had not felt so out of the ordinary, even with Stan sitting just across from them.

When the gift shop was empty, Dipper had gotten used to Bill sitting on the counter and eventually finding his hand, the demon tightly clasping his with the boy’s. Soon enough, their idle fingers would intertwine without either of them noticing, that is, until they have to let go when a customer enters the shop. Each time this happens, Bill would give him this look, all pinched lips frowning and doe eyes. Once the gift shop was empty again, Dipper made it a point to wordlessly tap at Bill’s knuckles.

The way Bill squeezes his hand, thumb locking along the middle of his palm, keeps the boy from letting go until the next customer enters.

Every six-thirty, when the Mystery Shack gets no more patrons, the two could be found sitting silently beside each other on the front porch. On Bill’s knee was Dipper’s hand, while Bill’s fingers laced in with the boy’s. It was a tranquil comfort to both of them, knowing how during this hour, witnessing the sky trickle into an inky lavender, no one could make them pull away from each other’s hold. Intimately against Dipper’s thigh was Bill’s, and on the boy’s shoulder, he’d feel the press of firm suit jacket cloth, sometimes the thick sheer of a silkish dress shirt. He’ll never tire of the fine vanilla scent that steadily came with the presence of Bill.

It was a simple joy, no one saying a single word, them with their hands nestled with each other’s. For most, it was gentle, but every once in a while, Dipper would abruptly grip at Bill’s hand, squeezing tightly and scanning him over with wide eyes, just to be sure he really could still feel and see him there.

There was an instance where Bill got a hold of a permanent marker and the first thing he did was to start drawing smiley faces on the pads of his fingers. At six-thirty, when Dipper held his hand and saw the said smiley faces, Dipper didn’t have to say anything for Bill to take the marker from his pocket, straighten out his fingers, and begin the smiley faces from the pad of his thumb to the pinky.

But the drawing got out of control and Dipper ended up with a crudely drawn turkey on his entire hand.

That night, lying in bed, this marker turkey with the words ‘look! a turkey!’ in the middle, was all Dipper could think about.

 

 

It was so stupid, but Dipper made sure to draw over the faded marker lines after he showered the next morning.

When he saw Bill downstairs, already sitting on the yellow couch, he waved at him with the turkey hand.

“Look! A turkey!” He grinned.

The moment Bill doubled over laughing, he laughed, too.

“Bill told me he won’t be coming to work for tomorrow,” Dipper told Stan, now looking at the faded turkey on his hand after he had washed the dishes and Bill had left exactly at seven that evening, “he needs to clear up a few things, don’t know what about.”

Stan broke out the beer. Needless to say, Dipper got drunk enough to go back downstairs because he thought he forgot to take the first step up.

“What the hell,” Dipper sputtered once he got to his room, “holy shit, you’re here.”

Bill was sitting on the bedside table, head in symmetry with the triangle window.

“Or m-maybe – maybe I’m just - just t-too drunk.”

But indeed, Bill was there, staring at him curiously. Dipper placed his unsteady hand on Bill’s shoulder.

“You’re very b-beautiful, don’t...d-don'tcha kn-know that?” He told him, and you could tell he was drunk with how intense he pronounced his words, thick with an underlying honesty.

“You’re drunk,” Bill replied.

“Yes, I’m d-drunk. And...and you’re b-beautiful." Dipper giggled, "And to-tomorrow, I’ll b-be sober, but you’ll...you'll s-still be beautiful.”

Bill chuckled. “Good night, Pine Tree.”

Dipper woke up the next morning without a single recollection of a word he said.

 

 

He knew he was drunk yesterday.

What he didn’t know was how hard it was to sit alone in the gift shop all day and to have no hand to hold at six-thirty in the early evening.

 

 

Bill came back the day after. It was the same day Dipper led Bill up the attic and threw spare pillows on the floor by the side of his bed, along with a huge quilt that smelled of old fabric conditioner. They sat together, bodies close, the quilt wrapped over their shoulders.

They would almost kiss. Almost.

Every single time. There, in the attic, just the both of them, or when the gift shop was empty aside from them behind the counter. It was getting on him, almost like Bill _wanted_ it like that. Bill would bring his lips on his neck, the cheek, the temples, the crevice where his wrist met hand, but never on the mouth. Bill never saw his frustration, hell, it was as if Bill ignored the idea – purposely inching away when Dipper tugs on his shirt, drawing back when Dipper moves in closer for his lips.

When the night sky had not a tinge of lavender left, the two went back up the attic, except they did not sit at the pillows by Dipper’s bedside.

“All right, say it,” Dipper begins. Bill tilted his head at him.

“What are you on about?”

“Don’t play dumb,” and Dipper, brows knitting, stepped closer toward Bill, which somehow placed Bill partly against the wall. He saw the demon fist his hands at his sides. Bill still looked collected, but with the way his eyes wandered, it won’t last long.

“Did I say something? While I was drunk?”

“Don’t be silly, of course not.”

“You don’t kiss me,” Dipper grits out. “You never had a problem with doing it before.”

Bill bit his lip. Dammit, did he know how baffling it was to watch him do that?

“So you’ve noticed.”

“It isn’t that hard to spot.”

Again, Bill was finding the right words. He looked off to the sloping walls, away from Dipper, and whenever he caught the boy’s eye, he bowed his head down at his shoes.

“I avoid kissing you,” Bill mutters, “because if I do, I might not be able to stop myself. The effect you have, boy.”

“Why?” Dipper asks, “Don’t you want me?”

Bill sharply inhales. “You don’t have a damn clue how much I want you, Pine Tree.”

Dipper suppressed the shiver down his spine. He sees it clearly now, how the true look of liquid fire fevered behind Bill’s solid gaze.

“If I kiss you,” the demon continued, “I might – “ and he holds Dipper’s wrist, pulling toward himself, “I might take it too far, you’re just, you make me – “ and he stops there, breath already short, looking Dipper right in the eye with thinly veiled desperation.

But Dipper didn’t care, not right now. Fuck everything, he’s getting him.

“William,” he growls.

The grip on his wrist is a vice-like as Bill sharply drew in his breath. His chest was heaving as he gulped, that lovely Adam’s apple brushing the clinch of his collar. His face went sweet shades of pink, a trapped predator, taking Dipper apart with his eyes.

“I warned you,” Bill rasps.

“You think I care,” Dipper leaned in close, and the demon’s warmth washed over him as he grazed his lips over the crook of where Bill’s neck met jaw, “William?”

The demon was shaking; the hold on his wrist went clammy, Bill abruptly placed his other hand on Dipper’s shoulder, gripping as if he’d crack to pieces. Then, like a sick, twisted reciprocation of how Bill treated him, Dipper began kissing his neck, sloppy, breathy bites and licks. The hand on his shoulder clenched and fisted its way to his hair, drawing him upward, making their eyes meet again.

Bill’s gaze, heavily lidded, was watery, and when he blinked, his lashes dampened the rims of his eyes, yet Dipper dared not call it weak – the demon could have set the entire room on fire. Bill darted out his tongue along his lip, causing the red flesh to glisten.

“Kiss me,” he begs. “Please, Pine Tree.”

“Shh,” he whispers, “not yet, William.” And the boy tipped up Bill’s chin, forcefully making him look up, as he worked on undoing the buttons on his shirt.

Bill continued asking, seemingly mad, _please please please_ , while Dipper kissed down his throat, saying _William_ against his blushing skin. Each bitten moan was charming music, the begs progressively sounded more painful, needy, until Dipper got to the middle of Bill’s torso and he inches up again, only to see Bill a quietly crying mess, drool slicking in a thin line down his chin.

Bill dragged him closer, angling his head. “Please,” he drawls, “Kiss me, please.”

The kiss burned – it was slow, hungry, passionate. Their lips strained, wet with spit, deep against each other, slippery, biting, rough. Dipper could feel Bill drawing in tiny hitches of breath, the fight to dig his mouth into his, could hear the soft clacking of their teeth as the kiss thrashed this way and that, Dipper pushing Bill flat against the wall and allowing him no breath, taking from the demon all that he possibly could.

“I want you – “ Bill snarls between the kisses, “Fuck, Pine Tree, I want you.”

If there was a time Dipper chose neither to look around him nor to coherently think, it was now.

Slamming him on his bed, he only saw Bill. The stray kissing, along with the heated rush of limbs, so much like a knitted dance, made Dipper feel as if he was swimming on clouds. Sweat, breath, wandering hands, the struggle to take their clothes off without parting their lips. Vanilla smelled of skin and he was lost, so damn lost, feeling absolutely nothing, yet a sweet, needle-like warmth spread its way through his gut, his _heart,_ oh fuck, he can’t think –

Bill brings the tips of his fingers to Dipper’s lower abdomen, stammering over bare skin.

“Fuck me,” Bill softly cries, well beyond the edge of desperation, “isn’t that what you want? To feel nothing?”

Dipper stared down at him.

“That’s what I’m here for,” the demon breathes, “you can’t get away forever, but you can get away now.”

_He makes me feel nothing. Sometimes, I wish I couldn’t feel a damn thing._

He keeps lying nowadays, doesn’t he?

Because Bill didn’t. There was something there, in the way he smiled, the way he held his hand, how he looked at him in ways he stopped trying to describe. Could it really be called _nothing?_

No, he shouldn’t put two and two together now, he shouldn’t even think now. Their movements were harsh, pushing, the heat of Bill’s mouth on the soft junction of his shoulder, teeth gnawing his skin to keep in screams, was enough to mud over his brain. It felt good, felt _wonderful,_ yet he could only focus on the fervid, swelling pain in his chest, the kindled spark of when their eyes would meet, the low, throaty whispers of _Pine Tree_ every now and then.

Bill dug his teeth into the crook of his shoulder as he screamed one final time, whimpering, almost sobbing. Dipper collapses beside Bill, who leans in to kiss him again. Exhausted yet pleasantly jaded, he dreamily kisses back, placing a hand at the back of Bill’s neck and pulling them closer.

A deep gaze meets brown eyes.

He can’t love him forever, but he can love him now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quote “Yes, I’m drunk. And you’re beautiful. And tomorrow, I’ll be sober, but you’ll still be beautiful.” is from the movie The Dreamers, 2003.
> 
> Chapter eight will be back to full-length. Meanwhile, here's the [aesthetic blog](http://even-stars-disappear.tumblr.com/) I made for Howl. Don't hesitate to ask questions; as always, I'm open!
> 
> I hope I made you ship Billdip again after DAMVSTF. See you next week, darlings.


	8. No Shows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Maybe we shouldn’t – "
> 
> Bill’s smile twitched sharp. “Scared, Pines?”
> 
> Definitely. To every inch of his nerves. But with each ounce of fear, he felt something perpetually dancing alongside it; thrill.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Those who read my replies to comments, checked the blog ~~(read the tags)~~ , and looked into the summaries, you’re safe. As always, pay attention. I love you all. ♥♥♥
> 
> I would like to credit Cas, one of my dearest readers (who also has an amazing way with words), for a particularly important line. Cas, you’ll know it when you see it! :)
> 
> (Dear anon who voiced out their confusion last chapter: go back to my reply if you haven’t already.)

**Chapter 8**

He has to reassure himself it’s not a dream when he’s slowly fleshed out of sleep by insistent tapping from the window’s glass one night. He has to think twice when he grips the side of his pillow and still hears it, _tack tack tack,_ feeling the sand of his hourglass drift through the needle hole with each clack. Then he hears a voice, someone he recognized, and yes, this voice was definitely real.

Dipper groggily hikes himself up an elbow, more asleep than awake as he squints through his heavy eyelids at the form of a coat-clad young man entering through the glass triangle panes, like a sneaking lisp of a spy from a crime novel.

“Bill?” His voice is gnashed from sleep.

“Sorry to wake you at this hour, Pine Tree.”

Bill’s stealthy climb into the side table, one leather shoe’s sole arching off the surface and a knee on the window frame, vaguely reminded the boy of a cat on hunt. He was draped in a long, dark overcoat that billowed with the young morning gust from the window. Its wide collar was upturned, framing his neck. He seemed to be a creature of all blackness, save from the occasional fleck of gold hair that gleamed from the moonlight and the silver shine of the coat front’s double-breasted buttons. Looking closely, he could catch where a dull white collar began at his neck, and could make out the askew blur of a bow tie.

Bill Cipher hops onto the floor from the side table, getting on his feet. “Come with me.”

Dipper fights with the thick glue of sleepiness. “What for?”

“Some fun. Hurry, put on a coat.”

His whole body rings like melting rubber as he half-willingly stalks to a closet on wobbly legs, pulling out the same blue turtleneck coat he’s worn that night he drove off to Lookout Point, but in his state of sleep interruption and the pitch-black of the attic, he hardly knew what coat he had just picked out.

“Okay, that’s good enough.” Bill was pacing, and the boy couldn’t tell if it was from excitement or anxiety.

“Where are we going?” He yawns, mind surreal and going in weird patterns as he struggles to tie his laces.

“Just around town, no biggie.”

“It’s…” Dipper glances at his digital wrist watch, “it’s one in the morning.”

“And we’ll be finished before the sun can show its ugly butt. Don’t worry, I’ll put the princess back in her tower by then.”

Dipper was too sleepy to say anything back.

Once his laces were tied, Bill urgently took him by the wrist and led him downstairs amidst solid darkness, only faint outlines of doorframes and figurines visible. Through the gift shop, they step out without a creak, out into the night of wide tree tops against the blue-black sky. The half-moon was bright enough to cast their shadows, moving quickly like black puppets as Bill made for the dirt road’s wide, tall trees.

With the hand he knew all too well clasping his wrist and the firm ebb of the demon’s coat brushing his pant leg, the realization of leaving deep into the night with Bill Cipher finally hits him like it should have the moment he saw that figure slip inside his window; with elation, terror, and the slightest hint of joy.

 

 

“You stole a car?!”

“Nope, just borrowed it, I swear I’ll put it back where I got it.”

Dipper pales, staring at said car parked between two big, tall trees and dense shrubbery. It was painted sleek and a bit bulky at the back, looked like a compressed van; you could get what was in the trunk by reaching out from the back seat.

“This is wrong,” Dipper worries, apprehensive as Bill opens the back seat for him. “Very wrong.” He couldn’t decide what was worse; going to do something in a dubiously stolen car or sport shooting in a maybe-illegal forest range without a permit (and administered by a criminology student).

“Yeesh, kid, relax,” Bill makes a downward motion with his other hand, “I was thinking of using the old geezer’s convertible for this – “

“Oh my God,” Dipper wails, and he watches the tick of Bill’s eye on the mention of ‘God’.

“– but I thought that you wouldn’t like what might happen _if ever_ the cops catch his pretentious STNLYMBL plates, considering his criminal record, so I took the initiative of a substitute. Get in, kid.”

Dipper questions his morals as he shakily climbs in, feeling like he was trespassing NSA headquarters. Bill shuts the door and he watches him round up through the window shield and enter the driver’s side.

“When did you learn to drive?” Dipper asks, dreading the answer.

Bill gears up the engine and the dashboard perks up with tiny lights. “Thirty minutes ago, I guess?”

Dipper has not braced himself when he gets pasted to the rest of his seat with how fast and hard Bill slams into the pedal and drives off. He could even hear the faint sounds of little rocks spewing away from the wheels. “Slow the hell down!” Dipper yells, haggling for the seat belt. From the rear view mirror, he can see the demon laughing.

“Can’t, we gotta hurry. You might wanna leave the seat belt. Look at what’s in the back.”

Dipper’s heartbeat spikes as he turns. There were about fifteen big gallons of liquid gasoline, all piled and lined up.

“What –? For – for fuck’s sake,” speech helplessly rolled off his tongue, “Bill, what did you say we were gonna do?”

“Some fun.”

“What kind of fun, you ass?! Are you going to set this town on fire?!”

They were already on smooth pavement, where thankfully, Bill drove a bit slower, yet he was still pretty close to speed limit.

“Yes and no,” Bill cheerily answers, “don’t worry, no one’s going to get barbecued. You’d all taste terrible enough as you flesh bags are. Just do what I say, alright, Pine Tree?”

“I have no reason to oblige, Bill.”

The car significantly slows. Dipper sees Bill gripping the wheel at ten and two o’ clock. This revving silence is suddenly like a pitch, as if Dipper had pushed a button to activate something no one wanted to witness.

“Look, kid,” the demon sighs out, “I’ve been inside a human vessel for more than two months. That’s a record, considering it’s been years since my last periodical one. While I have made-do with my abilities, you can’t blame me for getting bored with lighting up the vigil candles in my vessel’s room.”

“You wanna set the town on fire because you're bored. Fucking wow, Bill."

“Stow away the sarcasm and just chill out, okay? My fire, like me, is still bound by unconsciousness' properties, meaning it’s limited. Technically not supposed to be real, y’know? It doesn’t consume in the rules of this dimension. I’d use the term ‘illegal’. It operates in the same way, agitating with alcohol or gasoline and quenching with water, but it doesn’t burn anything, not really. Give me your hand,” then he leaves only one on the wheel. Astonishingly enough, the car doesn’t wobble.

The demon rubbed his thumb and forefinger quickly, and just when little sparks and flecks misted about like glitter, he pointedly snapped his fingers.

At once, a flame, bursting in bright blues and glowing against the car’s interior, coated his entire hand from the wrist up.

“You can touch it,” Bill held his gaze from the rearview mirror, “it won’t consume.”

Gulping, Dipper neared the tips of his fingers to the sides of the flame. He didn’t feel even a hitch in rise of temperature. He pushed his hand in, further than the last knuckles. There was nothing, feeling exactly like the windless summer, simply the flame swallowing over his skin as he grazed his hand over Bill’s.

“Please tell me this isn’t a dream,” Dipper mumbles.

“If I wanted you to have dreamt this instead of having you awake for it that would’ve happened. Do you trust me now?”

Dipper doesn’t say anything, yet he gave Bill a timid little nod through the rearview mirror. Bill’s hand gripped at his tighter before letting go, the blue flame going out with it, leaving them in darkness again.

“You’re telling me you want to go arso?”

“That puts a nice ring to it, yeah.”

“Bill, we’re gonna light up this town. For _fun_. Don’t you think – maybe someone might notice? Like some random guy getting up at night to take a leak to see the entire street on fire? We do have a thing called a newspaper? And telephones? And, y’know, mobile phones with cameras?”

“Oh boy, you’re such a buzzkill. ‘Course I am! I doubt they’ll even see it when it’s right in front of them, these airheads are more oblivious than a candlewick. They better take it as a compliment my fire wouldn’t burn out their peanut brains.”

As a last result, Dipper tries once more. “Maybe we shouldn’t – “

Bill’s smile twitched sharp. “Scared, Pines?”

Definitely. To every inch of his nerves. But with each ounce of fear, he felt something perpetually dancing alongside it; thrill.

“What if we get caught?”

“Then we’ll get away,” Bill surely answers, voice a smooth flicker. He dug a hand into the console and fished out a pair of gloves, throwing them at Dipper, muttering ‘catch’.

Does he, Dipper Pines, seem like the kind of guy to set artificial fire to the sleeping town of Gravity Falls? Obviously not, he decided as he tugged on the gloves, but being in this over-speeding car with Bill Cipher, shaken from sleep (and still feeling like he’s still in it) is oddly persuasive.

 

 

Once in the first street with closed, dark shops, the two have already worked out a plan. Dipper would heave a gallon of gasoline out the road with the help of Bill. Together, they’d splatter it over steps leading into a store or the picket fence of a house. If ever there were trees and posts, they’d chuck the gasoline as high was it would go.

Bill made sure a line of gasoline connected each structure, and at the end of each street, they drove slowly as Dipper let the gasoline out the window, connecting with the next street they were to douse next.

Dipper never thought he’d be accessory to a crime, but he also never thought he’d enjoy, in the most subconscious sense, throwing this flammable, putrid-smelling liquid all over town with a demon having the tendency to over speed on the wheel. It was the not-quite-dangerous taste of it all, along with the dense silence only pierced by sloshing, that kept him from getting out of the car and walking his way back to the shack.

Hell, he’d even say it was quite relaxing. He knows it’s ambiguously wrong but he’s still doing it, hanging by a thread of chance, hoping the cops won’t catch them doing…whatever crime this is.

They have doused half the town when they get to the heart of the roads, driving towards the statue of the false founder, Nathaniel Northwest.

“Slow down,” Dipper tells Bill, who took it as a code word for ‘stop’, and immediately paused in front of the monument.

“Oh, that guy, can’t believe I almost missed it!”

“For some reason, I really wanna gas him.”

They share sly looks from the rearview mirror, and after a dramatic pause, Bill clicks a button that unlocks his door. “Just do it.”

Hauling up another gallon from the back, Dipper steps out the van and starts dousing gasoline at the statue’s feet, breast, then stepping back and giving it a good heave, he splattered the foul liquid on Nathaniel Northwest’s hat-covered head.

Wet cement slimed against the moon’s gentle wash. Dipper viciously smiled at it.

Then the distant sounds of a police car’s sirens pierced the quiet town.

Dipper’s breath caught in his throat; he abandons the half-empty gallon by the steps, turns his whole body back in a twisted sprint and yells at Bill, _“drive!”_ He barely got a foot on the support and his fingers didn’t even grasp at the handle before the car lurched forward and off.

“Oh my _shit_ ,” Dipper feels his hands pricking violently underneath his gloves as he slams the car door shut, body in an awkwardly swift position, “Christ, what do we do, what do we do?!”

And fuck, Dipper could scream his head off, because Bill just laughs at him like he’s fretting over a paper cut. “Chill, bucko. I got this.”

“You got this?!” Dipper rants, “ _Chill?_ You’re a demon, you have nothing to worry about! But me? I’m going to jail, I’m not gonna finish college, taking a minor in Anthro will be all for shit because I’m going to stay in a cell for the rest of my life –!”

“Stop talking,” Bill is trying his best to sound comprehendible whilst speeding at over a ninety, “we’re not gonna be caught by some stupid, dim-witted cops. Sit down, keep your head low, and enjoy.”

Dipper peeks between the head rests. A cop car is wailing about ten yards away behind them. If he looked closely, he could pinpoint Blub’s focused profile from the driver’s seat, and Durland’s even more comically engaged face from beside him.

Here he is, in the middle of a cop chase, sitting glued in the backseat of a stolen car-slash-compressed family van, petrified for what’s left of his life and damn it all, the nonsense part of his brain is haggling for control and he doesn’t know why nor how, but his gut is crying at him to _do something_ , a nasty voice is whispering for him to throw himself into the bold unknown, regardless of how dangerous it may be. He ran through it in his head. He ran through it again and this time, it made the slightest lick of sense.

In a flash of motion, Dipper twist in his seat and swoops to take the last gallon from behind, hurting his pelvic bone in the process, then opens the window. The clearer ring of police sirens that penetrated the car makes Bill whip his head back to Dipper.

He forced open the gallon cap. He hikes the container up a knee, astonished by his own adrenaline strength, and lets the gasoline pour and slosh out the window, and he hoped to whoever’s up there that the gasoline touches the pavement because –

“Finally, you’re doing it!” Bill chuckles, tone hysterical, “Knew you had it in you all along, Pine Tree!”

Dipper ducks his head down from being spotted by the police car’s headlights. “Damn it all, if we don’t set this town on your stupid fake fire, then me ditching sleep at one in the morning will be all for nothing, you ass!”

“Oh no, no,” he sees Bill shaking his head at the side of his eye, smiling wide, “This is what I’m telling you! Feeling your bones shutter with blood rush, your hands pricking with chill, wholeheartedly baring your throat to the friggin’ void! That’s what it’s like to be human, to be _mortal_ , Pine Tree! To tell yourself you wanna live, not just survive!”

Was Bill seriously on an existential speech right now? “Shut up, oh my fuck, I’m just so – so fucking scared I don’t know what I’m doing.”

But Dipper knew exactly what he was doing. He’s scared, yes. But in every level of that and twice, he was excited to the tips of his fingers. The car swerved a bit to the left. Head snapping to Bill, he sees the demon has removed one hand from the wheel and had lit up a fire in his hands, quicker and seemingly more dangerous than the rest run he’s demonstrated before.

“Give me your hand,” Bill states, “the gasoline on your gloves will hold it enough. You know what to do, Pine Tree.”

Keeping a grip with his entire arm on the gallon, Dipper reaches out to surge his hand in Bill’s flame, ringing in the back of his head how he had trusted Bill so easily.

Palm and fingers shaking as he watched his glove go on fire yet not getting burned, he waited a tense moment right before the gallon went empty, and as the last strong dribble leaked out, he placed the fire through the gasoline.

It was wildfire in the gallon; once the flame licked it, the interior blazed up and in shock, he let the container out the window, watching it roll violently against the slicked pavement. But it didn’t stop there, oh no; with the speed they were rushing in, he saw the fire swim a blue, turbulent shade, affecting grills and sidewalks and the lower portion of lamp posts.

Then they made a sharp turn, and it’s like someone flipped off the lights. Suddenly, the town was deep in sleepy black again.

“Oh my fuck – “ Dipper cries, “Holy _shit.”_

He thought of it all; blue and white and sky-hued flame, but in a flash he no longer had to imagine it because they swerved around the community square, narrowly avoiding the police car, and bolted right back into the streets they have doused.

The flame trail resulting from the thrown gasoline container had found its way to the connected line they’ve arranged to bridge with each street. In a matter of moments, the flame had swallowed a house then the one next to it, trees, stores, all up in a glorious, raging blue hell. It was what ice looked like if fire wrecked into it, yet the structures remained solidly intact. Everywhere Dipper looked, he saw glowing flame. They zipped past Gleeful’s Used Autos, Greasy’s blazing log of a diner, the flower shop where Bill yelled at a guy running his dog, and residences glowing cerulean up to fifteen feet from their rooftops.

Bill, who had been in silent concentration the whole time, looked back at Dipper and laughed, “Ain’t this what you humans call ‘awesome’?”

Bill had a very different idea of awesome, but while Dipper thought about whoever they were waking up because of the loud screech of the engine or the bright inferno of the streets from the windows, he couldn’t really deny that yes, this was pretty fucking awesome.

 

 

“Can you repeat that again, Blubs?!”

“I’m not kidding, officer,” Blubs quickly rasped, back against the car door, “the fire caught our tire and we had to get it off. Durland tried to pat it with his uniform and it got caught too, but here’s the thing, it’s not _burning._ It’s just on fire but it’s not burning. Here, I’m putting my hand in it now, I tell you, I don’t feel nothing!”

“Tell him about half of the town’s streets are also on fire,” Durland spoke.

“What?!” Screeched the voice from the receiver.

“Y-Yeah, that too,” Blubs stared up at the burning monument of Nathaniel Northwest, “and I damn well wish I was passed out having funky dreams on expired apple juice, officer.”

 

 

When they’ve gone for a while without police sirens blaring around them, Bill stopped the car and told Dipper to get into the passenger’s seat. Then, with moderate speed, they drove out the town proper and into the highway, Bill rolling down the windows, letting cold morning air seep into the car.

Dipper was still breathing heavily, blood coursing through his veins and sitting slack, eyes on the side mirror, watching the remnants of harmless blue flame swallow buildings and trees.

A short-lived glint caught his eye and he looked up. The electric lines where sparking against the black sky, little blips of sharp white.

Smiling, he turned towards Bill. “So demons can do that, huh?" Then he looked back up at the sparking electric lines, Bill following his line of sight. “You’re happy?”

Bill puffed out a breathy laugh, his eyes flickering to his lap then blinking up at Dipper again. “You bet,” he says, and the boy was left to hear Bill’s voice without hindrance, relishing in saying those two words.

“By the way, one more thing,” Bill spoke on, “we’ll be done in about an hour or so.”

The glowing digits on his wrist watch read 2:47 AM. Still smelling gasoline on the crevices of his gloves, he has never felt more awake.

After leaving the vehicle parked in between dense trees along the highway, Bill told him to pull off his gloves, taking them and stuffing it in an inner pocket of his coat.

“We need bare hands for this,” he explained. Just before he thought he was asleep and dreaming again, consciousness hit him hard and made his legs wobble as he opened his eyes to a purple-black expanse that was the sky. Tree tops swayed softly at his feet. Bill gripped his hand against the harsh wood of something cylindrical.

They were up high, on the tethering wooden flooring of the water tower.

It amazed him how he felt not a lick of fear. He reached out and held the railing with steadfast hands. The town underneath them was on fire, ravishing yet serene, which lit up at their feet in an ardent glow. It looked wild, destructive, but both of them knew it was as peaceful as it was severe.

Will this town ever notice that one night, a fire that clashed and diluted with a storm pranced through their streets and doorsteps?

This was real. So real.

Bill’s hand slipped away from his, and for the first time since opening his eyes eighty feet off the ground, he looked at him. The curl of Bill’s lips shadowed with the glow of the fire as he took Dipper’s gloves from his coat, tying them to the railing.

“We were here,” Bill announces, snapping his fingers for a wisp of fire to flicker, lighting up Dipper’s gloves. It went up immediately, yet did not consume.

“Hey,” Bill tapped at his knuckles, “the morning’s young. Wanna do something else?”

“What are you up to now,” Dipper was already making to hold Bill’s hand, lacing their fingers together.

“Wanna break into the community theater house?”

He’s already set the town on fire, what worse could he do? And like what he said, Bill Cipher is oddly persuasive.

 

 

“Oh hell, this is too easy,” Bill laments when they’ve reached the corner of the street, a dark section they have not doused, and jogged their way past the ticket booth. “Seriously? Your night guard’s sleeping?”

“I don’t see why that’s a problem?”

Bill huffs. “I was looking forward to nicking his keys without him seeing!”

Dipper, beyond bewildered, was going to tell Bill not to be so loud but instead, he just stares at him. “You didn’t want us to land _inside_ the theater because you wanted to pick pocket the night guard.”

“Ugh. Anyway, since this town’s got sloppy police guards, let’s just go,” Bill sighed, taking the keys from the guard’s belt.

The theater was pitch-black and empty, smelling of old cushion and stale popcorn butter. Their steps on the carpeted floor resonated in dull thumps. No lights were on, not even backlights, just an emergency exit neon sign. However, on the stage, it’s red, velvet-textured curtains could be discerned if he squinted.

“Too dark,” Bill says, and judging from how Dipper felt Bill’s presence move away from him, he was stepping around.

“I’ll find the sound room, y’know, where all the controls are,” Dipper says, already taking steps away, but he felt Bill grab his wrist and tug him back. The warmth he felt indicated they were really close to each other.

“Are you an idiot? With that calculus grade, obviously not, but you might alert some shim sham security system.” Bill’s voice was rich and echoing, and since he couldn’t exactly see his face, Dipper’s eyes just wander above the general area of Bill’s shoulders.

“Suggestions, then?”

“Let’s kiss,” Bill excitedly chirped. Dipper could clearly hear the smile in those words. “C’mon, Pine Tree.”

”Bill, _why_ –”

“Remember the power lines sparking? They were triggered because I was happy. If you kiss me now, I’d likely get another rush of endorphins and be able to concentrate chemical energy into light energy among nearby sources, a.k.a., theater lights.”

Dipper rolls his eyes. “No, dude, I was gonna say why would you even ask, y’know, I’m okay with it. Hell, I like it when you –“

Dipper says no more as Bill tugs him by the collar, swoops in and kisses him. It was controlled, but felt exactly just right. The moment Dipper started to kiss back, he did not see the glimmer of lights blinking on the high walls.

The kiss progressed, yet stayed moderate. Dipper could even call it sweet; there was no demanding force of lips, only the soft, funny smiles they could feel against each other’s mouths. The boy took the liberty of twisting a lock of Bill’s hair around his finger when he held him at the crook of his jaw. At the corner of his eye, he watched the theater light up brightly from the stage’s beam and floodlights flicker up from the corners of the stage.

Bill pulled back, and finally, he saw his face once again. For an intimate moment, all they did was look at each other, but they did not seem to be aware of it. Breaking away the gaze was difficult.

Bill went for the stage, not bothering to take the steps and instead boosting himself up the platform. “Hey, what was that thing you humans have constructed to be bad luck in a theater?”

“Uh, saying the M-word?” Dipper answers, “I really don’t think you should say it, this town’s swarmed enough with the supernatural as it is. Exhibit one, you.”

“Even you’re in on it! Please,” Bill scoffs, “it only exists in Europe. Where are we? The Americas, kid.”

And he turned around, circling the stage, then to Dipper’s shock, he raises both middle fingers up in the air and yells, “Macbeth! Macbeth, you _son_ of a _bitch_!”

“Bill, what the _hell_ are you doing?!”

“Yeah, heard that, motherfucker?!” Bill screamed back, but he wasn’t talking to Dipper, “All the way from Gravity Falls, Oregon, Pacific Northwest of the United States of fucking _America_ , get over here and see if you can make me trip in a sewer when I get outta here, doucheface!”

Bill caught Dipper’s eye. The boy had a hand over his mouth, doing a terrible job in keeping in his laugh.

“Join me, Pine Tree. Not every day I get to flip off an actual Shakespearean curse. Yeesh, really, what a dick curse, leave the theater people alone, they’re already dead enough inside as they are,” he laughs.

“No idea what you’re talking about,” Dipper replies, “but okay, what else am I going to do if I’ll just watch you scream at air?”

Bill crouches down from the edge of the stage. “That’s what I’m talking ‘bout,” he smiles, holding out a hand to Dipper. The boy grasped it, and hiking himself up with the help of a bar underneath the stage, he was up.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, before raising his own middle fingers just as Bill did and shouting to a non-existent audience, “Suck on my nuts, Macbitch!”

Ignoring the ‘oh snap!’from the demon, Dipper went on, “You pissed yet or what? Come over here when the UN Anomaly Department approves your visa!”

There goes his little knowledge about anything remotely related to theater, Dipper thinks. Also the last of what he calls holding back.

“What? You gonna stop there?” Bill says, “Step right up, Macbeth was a real pain in the ass.”

The boy took a deep breath.

The swore and raved and bawled until they didn’t even know what they were swearing about, until the puns punned themselves and they couldn’t trace their way back from a particular joke, but who the hell would care? Adrenaline coursed and shone and won until it wore off pleasantly, and this was the time when Bill hopped off the stage (still not using the stairs) and shrugged off his black coat. With the energy they were releasing and the bright lights, the cold theater had turned somewhat warm.

“Suspenders?” Dipper remarks as Bill threw the coat on an aisle seat.

“What? I like ‘em,” Bill nonchalantly replies, taking the seat beside his coat. His bow tie was slightly ruffled. “Also, make a joke about grandpas and I will annihilate you.”

“Chill out,” Dipper laughs, taking the seat beside Bill, third from the aisle, “you’re always dressed like you’re going to a school dance with a catwalk theme, don’t worry, I got used to it.”

The demon turned around in his seat to face him, gently nudging his fist against Dipper’s forearm. “Gonna take that as a compliment.”

Dipper only smiled back at him without a word, and all at once, silence held sway of the empty theater.

What more could he not grasp from Bill? However he tries, he could not pin him down, and god, he’s felt way too much for this to be only thrills and shouts and kisses in the dark, he’s felt his heart hammer against the cage that was his ribs; the demon was _this_ , a wild child with his ticket all taped over, who’s idea of fun was town-wide arson. Bill was wind-swept hair and morality, carelessly, tragically beautiful, the opposite of every ignorance he may have implied. He was all things in which Dipper felt alive.

Bill then stands, grabbing at Dipper’s hand and telling him to get up. There was finality in the twinkle of his eye and the rigidness of his smile, but Dipper did not see this.

They were up on the stage again. Some lights around the entrance and side halls dimmed off. There were many times Dipper asked Bill why in particular they were doing something, but in this lonely silence of empty seats and blank spaces, Dipper did not speak.

Instead, he watched. He felt.

Bill clasped their hands together, stretching their arms to the side, and moved closer, close enough that he could pick up that faint smell from sniffing the shampoo bottle in the grocery. His chest twisted, and he placed Dipper’s other hand at his shoulder and steadily gripped the boy’s waist.

No music. No shows.

Bill let out a sigh, looking at Dipper for all he’s worth. Just this last time if he was permitted, because with this one, forever won’t last. He’s consumed his offers of escape and goddammit, why did he let himself get lost in it with him?

Bill smiled. Why the fuck not? He laughed too for good measure, pressing their foreheads together, subtly feeling Dipper lean back into him. Fuck, what was that shrill down his gut? Their steps were wisps of a ribbon in their waltz. What was he to say? That he was glad there came the day where it was more than just his plan? That he was glad he met him, no matter the insignificance of his life in the great timeline that was his own? Will that be everything? He charged right into the boy’s life, too soon and too quick, and  _this_  was not the plan, not for him.

He wanted to hold him, just a little bit longer, and his fingers dug harder into Dipper's hands. Bill did not want the boy to be a mistake, and as he heard him counting under his breath like he himself had done underneath the streetlamp, _five, six, seven, eight,_ the hollow where he had no heart shook, thundered, begged, how he wanted to stay here in defiance of everything he deemed right.

What a sad thought it is to say that with the boy, there's no forever. What an even sadder thought to reassure one’s self that at least, there’s now.

  
  


_Eight, seven, six, five._ Not a beat was playing yet Dipper didn’t need one. It was outlandish to remember that once, hope was just the dull memory of a salve slathered on an open and festering wound. He's long forgotten the exact reason why he had left himself be the one adored. On this quiet stage, they spun, they footed, they wound about, slow and nervous yet softly fierce, gradual steps with their chests pressed together. Dipper no longer held him at the shoulder; his hand grasped the back of his shirt.

He has never wanted anything this bad, he never wanted _anyone_ so bad, fuck it all, his face clots with the desire to shed tears, because he had loved the sound of his voice, the wisp of his hair, the elegance of his fingers twined with his own. He had loved all the little things that made waking up a lot more worthwhile. Bill had made him happy; he breathed him in and his lungs met blood, oh god, it was down to the last match trying to strike itself on the box, begging to start, praying that this time it’ll light up. All these years he’s never felt faith, but Bill was the only exception.

And he’s on his way to believing.

Lost in the waver of their dance, Dipper did not notice that all the lights have gone out, except for the little bulbs of accent lights on the stage’s ends, which twinkled softly.

 

 

They come back at the attic in the eerie hour where the sky doubts defying the oncoming arrival of the sun and tinges itself the tiniest prick of gray.

They could not let go of each other’s hands, even as Bill made Dipper lie down back on the bed he’s left that seemed so long ago. Bill, with his coat snugly back on, sat at his side.

“Sleep here,” Dipper asks, if only he could wake up to this face, squeezing Bill’s hand, “please.”

Bill only smiles. “I can’t, Pine Tree.”

“Why?”

The smile cracks. “I just…can’t.”

Dipper, although disappointed, nods. They held each other’s hands tighter, that desperate last wish of wanting to hold onto something that’ll slip away again.

“Sleep tight, Pine Tree.”

Locking their eyes, Dipper’s lips moved to speak but Bill put a finger against them. Instead, he softly cupped the boy’s cheek while he raised the hand that held Dipper’s and pressed it to his chest, closing his eyes. No more words were said.

Like he appeared that night at his window, stealthy and sure, Bill is gone.

The spaces between his fingers seem so empty, so he grips the side of his pillow, grinning wide and tired, while the last of Bill’s smile lingered in his sweet, slumbering thoughts.

He just might love him.

Maybe tomorrow, he’ll know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This was emotionally exhausting, oh gosh. 
> 
> I took a few lines from, you guessed it, The Only Exception by Paramore. I also consider this song as Bill and Dipper's relationship soundtrack.
> 
> See you very soon[.](http://even-stars-disappear.tumblr.com/)


	9. 20/20/20/20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Agape: unconditional love
> 
> Ex. Mabel Pines

**Chapter 9**

He stood in front of Mabel’s room.

There was no sweet smell of newly-baked cookies wafting from the door’s crack, nor were there cotton whispers in the air. The house of his mindscape was still and undisturbed, a strict home of silence, like an untimely visitor one knew they could not be rid of looms over the doorstep. The princess should be back in her tower before the sun can shine.

Still, he stood in front of Mabel’s room.

The walls and its doors and its windows all seem like a façade of paper and cardboard; they serve no function, dummies of the permanent sunless afternoon, stuck in the mew of an unticking three o’clock. Silence. Silence. Silence.

And such, he stood in front of Mabel’s room.

Good memories. Ah, good memories of his twin sister. To die young is to leave the biggest hole in who have loved them the most.

He stood in front of Mabel’s room.

If just to see another sweet memory, maybe he’ll give the black expanse another try. He twists the knob and it permits him. But there is no cramped space of silvery spider webs.

There is no basement with the burned lock.

Instead, he now stood in front of a thoroughly empty room. Not a bed, not even a side table. The wooden floor was worn, the wallpaper of soft floral was crumbling, crisping away. It smelled of old saturation, heavy and dank. Yet what was quietly peculiar were the other wide-open doors on the walls.

There was one on the wall in front of him, revealing a nest of other doors in a deep, winding hallway. They were all open. Same goes for the other two doors at his side.

He turned back. Behind him, there was no door. Only bare, crumbling wallpaper.

Then he felt something in his hand. Soft and thin. Opening his palm, it was a thread of red yarn. He turned up front again, and there he saw that the yarn was not only a short piece; it swam across the floorboards, where it ended tied to a rib bone.

The rib bone of Waddles’ skeleton.

Before he could scream in terror, the scattered skeleton of the pig collected itself whole, fitting together in joints and ends until it formed into a decent, creaking shape of a skeletal body. The sound of its white bone scraping against the wood boards as it slowly walked towards the door to his right echoed out through the hallway expanse of other open doors.

When the string finally pulled taught, Waddles’ skeleton peeked back at the boy and its empty skull seemed to beckon him; _follow me._

He was still in panic; Dipper’s lungs pumped as if they wanted to punch out his throat. Oh god, Waddles! The pig was dead! He saw it himself! In the forest! And now he was being told to follow his stale corpse of a skeleton!

Yet he followed him, because in tying that knot with trembling fingers, he had said, _from you to us, my friend._

Waddles was his friend, his friend…. _his friend_ …his friend…

They walked many lonely halls, entered many decaying doors. The rooms themselves were like they were stolen from a dollhouse .So far, they were alone. Waddles turned each corner and walked into rooms as if he was programmed. Each hike was mechanical and squeaky. Dipper tried not to look too long at the broken pieces of rib bone that threatened to finally snap off and fall to the floor.

And then they entered a hall with only one door at the end of it, still open, where other open doors were visible from its frame. Both walls on its sides were bare, or so Dipper thought.

They passed by the decaying wall of torn and wet wallpaper, and on it was etched with broken glass shards, he knew from the bits and pieces stuck in the wood, these words crudely written in very big letters:

 

####  _CECILIA YOU’RE BREAKING MY HEART YOU’RE SHAKING MY CONFIDENCE DAILY_

 

He did not have enough moments to stand horrified, punched with such grim sublimity, because Waddles had crept both of them into the door at the end of the hall.

But he continued to look back at the message on the wall! The cold and worrisome message on the wall! He swore he could hear the tune in his head! In his head! _In his head!_

And that same door he nailed his eyes at is the first one that slams shut. Cringing, he watched as the floor around its crack got quickly soaked with sea water. He looked away, whispering…whispering… _whispering_ to himself not to think about it.

As they continued to walk, he noticed these doors, which each had a nearly broken rose taped onto each one, had only one room in them. These rooms contained only one thing.

There was one with an unspinning ceiling fan, little stickers of stars dotting the ceiling. There was one with a set of angel candles, wicks unburned on top of innocent cherubim heads. There was one with a mirror which he did not see his reflection in. One contained a poofy dress of lace draped over the wall, one enclosed a single slice of rainbow cake on a dainty silver saucer, placed in the middle of the floor.

Broken roses! Broken roses! An expanse of taped and broken roses!

They also walked past one where a soft tune of humming voices played from a music box. They were high and gentle, and once they passed by the doorframe, the music stopped, and so every bit of peaceful isolation sucked itself into a vat, leaving Dipper in flat state of rigid alarm.

The last door on the hallway was closed. When Waddles tapped on it with a decayed hoof, the door creaked open the smallest bit, and all Dipper saw in it was darkness. Waddles walked in, the door swinging open itself.

The moment Dipper stepped into the room, he saw what it really was.

It was their bedroom in the attic, cast in soft grays with the permanent sunless afternoon outside the triangle window.

And Mabel sat at her bed.

She looked absolutely terrible, but what would you expect from someone who crash drowned from a fifty-foot cliff in a bus accident? Her hair was a bitter mess of soaked, brown tangles, tips flattened wet to the mattress of her bed that seemed to have lost all color. The sweater she wore was completely drenched, heavily torn with loose holes and smelled of salt. Her socks and shoes were not in any better condition; in fact, her right leg’s sock had a long tear from an actual flesh wound, slicing from her knee to her ankle and oozing thickly with scabbed blood. Her shoe there was missing.

Her torso had an awkward shift, as if her side was beaten hard at a dull angle, yet she sat there with uncanny gracefulness, facing Dipper’s bed. Her dainty hands, sliced with bruises and tiny bits of glass, gently lay atop each other on her lap. Wherever her skin would show, it was pale gray porcelain, purpling in some places. She did not shake, as still as a mannequin.

She _was_ the cold corpse of his nightmares, the cold and wretched corpse of his nightmares.

Yet this did not register to him! He did not think that this Mabel was the same one that haunted the deepest pits of his run-down mind, buried far and hidden well, the gruesome body in the morgue staring lifelessly up at him as he wept and ruined the rest of four years away. This was not the child of pain and loss morbidly spat out to finally break him down. For him, this was not the face of his misery.

To Dipper, who desperately longed for her back, this was his twin sister. This was his _Mabel;_ sweet, lovely, beautiful, the very reason he still allowed himself to breathe, and in that moment he swore he’d do anything, _anything_ to still be here in this dream, because to him Mabel was sun and stars and sky and beating bloodied heart and Dipper loved her beyond every other thing in the world.

“Brother,” she smiled, voice only a rasp, and Dipper felt his heart break in his chest.

“M-Mabel,” he answered.

“Sit, please.” Her hand motioned for his bed, and Dipper did not hesitate to obey, close to tears as he sat on the edge of the mattress.

He saw her face for the first time. Her wonderful eyes were still dulled, grayed balls, and he didn’t think she could blink. Strands of hair stuck to her neck and cheeks. She was smiling too wide. Her braces of rust bled her gums in, making this brownish blood cling to the sides of her teeth. She looked sick, she looked _dead_ , but Dipper saw nothing of this quiet madness; all he saw was _his sister._

And oh, Dipper could kill himself, because her smile that was all too wide abruptly disappears.

No! No! No!

“Dipper,” she sulked, her neck snapping as she tilted her head, “why are you leaving me?”

 _Why was he leaving her?_ What has he _done?_ He’d never leave her! She was his sister, the one he threw his life away for after her death! He’ll never leave her, not when he’s seeing her again and this time it’s not a memory, it’s _real_ this time, why did she say he was leaving her? Oh god! Oh god! It was tearing him apart! Dipper would _never_ leave her!

These five words alone were enough to make Dipper heave a sob. What could he have done to make his twin sister think he was leaving her? _He’d never leave her!_

On the wall above Mabel’s head were four calendars that flitted erratically. Each month read April and each day of every week was a twenty. The whole four years were an April 20, the bleak morning of when they found her body floating idly by the rocky slope.

“I’d n-never leave y-you, why w-would you say that, M-Mabel?”

Mabel frowned. Oh! She clearly wasn’t happy about him! Look, he had made his sister frown! Evil thrives in what makes Mabel kiss away her smiles! The things he’d do to make her smile again!

“We were together,” Mable continued, “I was happy, brother. You practically worshiped me. But,” and she sobbed, her body hiking up, “but why are you stopping? Why are you putting me aside, Dipper?”

_Putting her aside!_

“Because of you, I’m…going to be alone.” Her voice was small and pitiful.

“N-No, Mabel please, don’t think – “

“I don’t want to be alone,” Mabel cried, “I don’t want to be alone! Don’t you hate it when I’m sad? Am I not your sister? Don’t you love me?”

Dipper wanted to reach out to her, but the way his mind went in distressed circles only kept him staring feebly at his crying twin sister. Why does she doubt that? Of course, he loved her! _He loved her above anything!_

“Of c-course I l-love you, y-you’re my sister a-and I – “

“ _Then you’d put me before anyone!_ ” She cried out, “I’m your sister and you’re supposed to put _me_ before anyone! Including yourself! If you really care about me then you’d put me in front of anyone else!”

“P-Please, Mabel–!"

He screamed; in a morbidly wet crunch, Mabel plunged to the floor, all broken bones and jutted flesh. Mabel wailed in pain as she treacherously crawled, slobbering broken arms and legs, pieces of glass in her skin, towards Dipper’s feet. She was a mess of dead flesh, tangled hair, old blood and worn cloth, crying and begging and whole body stuttering in the claw of death as she held unto his ankle with sordid fingers, looking up at him with a dreadful face, sea water dribbling from her nose.

“I’m already dead,” she gasped from her water-clogged throat, “you’re spitting…spitting at my grave, please….the least…the least you could do is stop hoping you’ll ever be happy again…stop…stop hoping…” And she grabbed hold of Dipper’s knee, the boy hearing her shoulder snap, slathering a mix of blood and water over Dipper’s legs, “I-I’m your sister, Dipper. I-If you really love me, you won’t let anyone…anyone come between us.”

“W-What do you m-mean?” Dipper cried, staring back at gray eyeballs blurring into him, “t-tell me and I-I’ll do it for y-you, a-anything for y-you.”

Mabel gripped him harder. “C-C̡i͘p̢h͞er. ͜L͟ea̢ve̡ him.̸”

Leave Bill?

Bill, who dug the ravaged recesses of his mind for a happy memory, who graced his days with laughter and warm, stirring presence, who was someone he looked forward to seeing the moment he woke up, knowing then he could allow himself the liberty of a smile? Leave the one entity in which he saw the rest of himself when he held his hand, even if he’s sworn he’d never love someone the like that again, who showed him incredible things and left him breathless, who made the morning prance dearly with the night?

Leave Bill, who was every reason why Dipper was on his way to believing?

He sobbed, anguished, breathing short as he shook his head.

“If you love me, you’d leave him.” Mabel pressed on, “There is no ‘cure’. Your true happiness is with m̨-̴m̨e, Dipper. The nights you c-can’t sleep because y-you think about how I’m no longer alive, the images you see of me floating in that r-river, the damn pills you force down your throat, it’s…it’s all because y-you love me _,_ Dipper! And the moment all that stops, you no longer love me!”

Dipper touched her pale cheek. It was colder than ice. The cheek of the princess in her tower was colder than ice.

“I’m the only one who cares about you. It’s just gonna be the two of us,” she murmured, spitting water, “just the two of us, Dipper. Just the…the t̵͟͝ẃ̶͡ò̧ o̷̧f ̧͢u̵s.”

At that moment, there was no such thing as a lie, because for him, Mabel never lied.

He thought of Bill, of every moment they spent knitting him back in place. It shattered him to the pits of his soul, but Mabel was here, the sister he’d give anything for, begging for him to kick down the blocks he had worked so tediously to build back up again. He did not have a trace of doubt! He couldn’t _allow_ himself a trace of doubt!

If the price of her smile was his own, Dipper would give it in a heartbeat, because he loved her, unconditionally.

And it would break him the most for her to think otherwise. From ice to fire and back again.

“F-For you, Mabel,” Dipper whispered, “For you.”

The dead corpse smiled.

Dipper wakes up.


	10. Doxepin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I’m on my way to believing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: How are ya’ll after last chapter? :)
> 
> This one was a pain in the ass to write. The vodka is dedicated to the friend of radiantchemicals, who was fortunately introduced to this fic. Ranter, if you’re still there, I’d love to have you back. This chapter was co-written with the amazing help and guidance of paranoiapersonified. Without them this would be a fucking mess. Thank you so much, have some virtual cake + hugs! :D
> 
> Something major will happen in this chapter and I seriously beg all of you to ready yourselves for anything.
> 
> Warnings: explicit gore and themes of serious self-harm.

**Chapter 10**

The sky is still dim outside when he gets out of bed and the first thing in his mind is alcohol.

It was a cruel itch, how he craved it in the worst way possible. It made him tremble just  _thinking_ about it, he longed to believe it was just because of casual dependency. But he needed that bitter taste in his mouth and down his throat so badly it hurt. There was a firm tremor in his steps and hands when he pattered down the stairs and into the kitchen to force out the only six pack of beer left in the fridge.

What was his intention exactly? To forget? To get so fucking drunk he couldn’t remember his own name? None seemed to pin it down and satisfy him, choking back a sob as he knocked the bottles on top of the table, sat down and pulled one out. The bottle’s acridly cold glass bruised at his skin yet he continued to softly cradle it in his hands, the pulse in his throat threatening to lock backwards through his mouth. He had no shame in crying; his teeth gnawed and his fingers were weak yet rigid, the wrecked voice in which he sobbed was no different from a dying animal. The bottle of alcohol doubled in his vision, and the more he thought of how sweet it’ll be to breathe that in, the more its dreamlike beauty slipped away.

Alcohol was not the passage to escape. He only had the pathetic, desperate belief that it was. Alcohol never made him feel better. It just made coming back to reality a lot worse.

He did not want to drink to forget! He wanted to drink because  _he could not forget!_

And if he thought about it, nothing has changed much. How stupid was he to think that it’ll be alright! He should have stayed on the ground while he could, should have not allowed himself to have the things he’s been needing all along. But he was swayed, he thought as he uncapped the bottle with a sharp clack, making the beer sizzle. He was lost and he loved it, dousing his heart with the wrong chemicals. Ignorance is bliss and he married that lull like a lost ship to a lighthouse.

His mind crumbling, he thought of what he needed to do and he was scared, so scared of losing him. How pathetic it was to come crawling back to this poison in the guise of cure. He braved his stomach and tongue then threw his neck back up to the ceiling. God, it was rapture how alcohol burned down his dry throat, but he continued to sob, for that physical pain of dousing his windpipe was a mere wisp to the shamble in his head.

The bottle was empty in moments. Dipper wasted no time in popping off the cap of another one. He drank hard and careless, if he could he would’ve not needed to swallow. He just  _wanted it inside him._  Anything to feel nothing. Alcohol dribbled down his chin but he squeezed his eyes shut. As he drank, the rim of the bottle clicked against his teeth out of sheer force, and the whole table shook as he brought each empty bottle down at the table.

He finished them all too soon and still he wasn’t drunk enough. What could’ve made his feet sway at three bottles still allowed his thoughts to race at six.

Three weeks into his current stay for the summer, Dipper had accidentally uncovered the places where Stan hid his harder liquor; while searching for a handful of screws, he found that there were bottles of vodka shoved in a thick box labelled “drainage issues” deep under the old sink. And while looking if Stan had any cereal, he stumbled on a few bottles of expensive whiskey inside a rotting top drawer of the high cabinets. They were figments of unperturbed curiosity, mostly because he was satisfied by beer and he didn’t think he’d actually need it, until now.

He stumbled up the counter to get to the cabinet, feeling a sharp stab of wanting to puke, but he held it down. A huge, thick bottle of whiskey was out of the drawer in seconds. He almost tripped on the way back to the floor, taking a glass from the counter and going back to the table.

The smell alone was putrid, and it reminded him of the sleepy bliss of just a few hours ago, the town up in flames, gasoline on his gloves and the billowing coat of whom he wanted to love. The bottle shook as he sloshed the brownish-honey liquid in the glass, pouring no more than a fourth through it.

Closing his eyes, he threw himself back, and from there he lost count. He liked not knowing what to give more focus on; how it felt as if he was burning holes in his stomach, what breaking it to Bill would do to his own sanity, or the creaking, creeping thoughts of Mabel and what he would be so willing to do to make her happy again. Back and forth his mind went, in ugly circles turning into fractals, getting blurrier as the sky outside fully welcomed the rays of morning.

In his drunken stupor, he did not notice the tall, bulky figure walking up to the kitchen doorway, which broke into a light sprint as it neared the kitchen.

“What the hell–Dipper?!” A frantic voice echoes.

He put his glass down with a hiccup, lazily looking up. Ah, the whiskey was down to half. Lovely. The figure was staring at him, looking quite shocked as it stepped closer.

“Dip – Dipper, what are you  _doing_ , kid?” It was the alarmed, gravelly jumble of words that made Dipper grin stupidly. “Christ, it’s seven in the morning and–and you’re drinking, for fuck’s sake, how the hell did you find that!” The old man – Grunkle Stan, he finally realized – made a move to grab the whiskey bottle from him, which he had taken hold of to pour a little more into his glass. This snapped Dipper out, and he angrily wrenched the whiskey away from him, causing the old man to pull back like had been stung.

“Leave– _urrp_ –leave m-me alone,” he scowls.

Dipper was glaring at Stan before he could think of it, his hand unsteady while he filled half his cup with whiskey and chucked it down his aching throat right in front of the senior, all be damned, sputtering in the process. Stan looked as if he had killed something inside him. Dipper only grimaced.

He should feel guilty, he knew that.  He  _wanted_ to feel guilty; Stan was alive and here and Dipper knew he was actively hurting his great uncle who had been nothing but selfless, but no matter how far he dug in his current state of mind, he couldn’t come up with a fuck or two shits to give. To him, Stan was simply a sad old man getting in the way of his misery, stopping him from holding weight on his own shoulders.

Dipper was annoyed. He even had the desire to tell Stan he could go fuck himself if only he cared that much.

He watched Stan open his mouth and close it, drinking his whiskey like he would drink milk.

“What happened?” Stan hesitantly begins. One day Dipper will wish that he heard the explicit amount of worry in those words. “Why are you drinking?”

Dipper shook his head, sloppily putting the intricate cap back on the whiskey bottle. Someone told him once never to drink on an empty stomach. It was disgusting just how much he wanted to hurl. Deciding he couldn’t care enough, Dipper ignored Stan and stood up, amazing himself how he didn’t fall immediately, and blindly made for the sink, swatting open the tap.

His throat locked into itself many times as he held his chest, gripping the sink. Spilling his mostly watery sick felt like the life was trying to break out of his mouth. Watching it go down the drain, he cupped his hands underneath the water and scooped it in his mouth, gurgling then spitting a few times.

While the water washed away his sick, he glanced back at Stan. He was still there, watching him, looking like he wanted to step in and tell him off, but he was biting his tongue out of sheer disappointment.

Ah, he wanted to laugh. A disappointment. That’s what he’s always been and nothing has changed much. For Stan’s case, he didn’t really give a flying fuck, but his thoughts suddenly steered to Mabel, and down came the horrible guilt, because he knew she wouldn’t want to see him like this, drinking like he wanted to corrode his liver. Once again, he let her down because of the simple ways of how fucking selfish he is.

But the solution to this problem was for him to drink more. Dipper knitted his brows.

He turned away from the sink, pushed past his still worried-looking great uncle, and went back upstairs without looking back.

In the attic, he could not look at Mabel’s side of the room without feeling her ghost in his mind, sitting there so gracefully.Too ashamed to place his pitiful self in the presence of Mabel’s memory, he opted to take a shower other than remain in that room. The smell of soap and shampoo hit his nose a lot stronger and cleaner while the essence of alcohol seeped away. Drunk and vision bleary, he didn’t realize he had squeezed the shampoo on the floor instead of his palm until he lathered his hair and felt no slippery bubbles.

He was extremely drunk, but dreadfulness beat the reflection of sobriety into him.

After the shower, out of habit, he opened the medicine cabinet and took out his prescribed medication, until he thinnest shed of sense came to him and he remembered how he shouldn’t take them on an empty stomach, much more when he had just consumed copious amounts of alcohol. Instead, he brushed his teeth so his hands could do something other than itch to take the pill into his mouth.

Dressed and feeling a little less worse, he pattered downstairs and back to the kitchen to see Stan had cooked him a breakfast of pancakes, eggs, bacon and sausages.

Stubbornly telling himself he didn’t deserve it, he walked past the breakfast and made for the sink, pulling out the thick box labelled “drainage issues” and rummaging through it to bring out a bottle of vodka.

He didn’t bother to take a glass and drink from there. He wrenched off the lid with a knife and drank it straight from the bottle. The exquisitely painful burn was welcomed unwillingly.

About eight now. Bill would be coming here soon.

Again out of habit, Dipper trudged to the gift shop. Someone was standing about looking clueless with a snow globe in hand and two shirts slung on their arm. When they saw Dipper, they made a vague motion of stepping back. Still holding the bottle, Dipper staggered behind the counter.

“Are you going to pay or are you just gonna stand there like a floor lamp?” Dipper slurred at them. The person placed the items on the counter, and the moment Dipper put them in a bag, they rushed away and out of the gift shop.

Customers continued to step in, no doubt from the scheduled tours. The rude or disdainful looks people sent his way were met with him taking gulps from the bottle. He tried to tell himself it was just because he couldn’t really spare some shits about them whispering things he could clearly hear, but in reality, he wanted to be so drunk that finally seeing Bill and speaking to him won’t come to him in glaring stabs but only through a numb floating he’ll forget when he passes out and wakes up.

Yet when he saw Bill enter, bright and beautiful from the lark of last night, the alcohol swept bitterly in his throat. Every mental defense he forced himself to believe crumbled down. It was just him and Bill and the inescapable reality of leaving.

And Bill had no idea, oh,  _he did not know._  Bill smiled so wonderfully, as if flowers would spring from his lips. Ease in his shoulders, a skip in his step. His characteristic way of dress, classy twisted into modern with the air of a prince, would have in any ordinary day made Dipper unable to stop looking at him, but today Bill was an oncoming silhouette, a reminder of finality, the sad glamour of glitters finally settling on the floor.

But then he noticed, even this smile did not last. Dipper watched Bill’s eyes stray to the bottle he held. The demon’s face visibly soured.

“Oh boy.” Bill greets, tone clearly dampened. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eye. How many hours didja get, Pine Tree? Nice water jug,” Bill approaches him, all imposing steps, and taps at the neck of the vodka bottle. “But I’d recommend getting a flask, they’re a lot less straightforward–“

Bill pauses when Dipper abruptly stands up, wobbling slightly, and announced in a loud voice to the few people perusing the items that the gift shop was closed. Being that no one wanted to aggravate the drunk, gruff cashier who looked pissed all morning, they left in quick scurries. Dipper then closed the door and flipped the sign so it said the gift shop was closed. If he had glanced at the freshly-placed newspapers at the stand, he would’ve read the blaring headline of  _Artificial Fire Existed!_

He found himself afraid of turning back to see him, facing Bill again with a defeated expression. The demon was puzzled and irritated, showing a now unhidden annoyance toward the bottle of vodka Dipper held in his hand with how he narrowed his eyes at it.

“I need–I need to talk t-to you,” Dipper stutters.

Bill frowns. “You got that right.”

Dipper motions for upstairs and Bill stiffly follows him. If this was yesterday, they’d be unable to detach their hands from holding, but instead Bill’s hands were fists at his sides and Dipper still drank straight from the bottle, even up the stairs. Each step was like a second down a ticking bomb, water inching onto live wire, closer and closer to chaos.

Once in the room, Dipper had to careen for his bed, sitting at the side, so he doesn’t fall directly to the floor.

“Why are you drinking,” Bill practically spat, a mix of irked and upset. “This developing alcoholism isn’t going to get you anywhere. For crying out loud, I can smell it on you.”

“Bill–” Dipper speaks, “Bill.” He blearily looked up at him, vision blurred, tasting gasoline on his tongue.

“What in the heck happened to you, Pine Tree?”

Everything converged in his head. Bill, Mabel, the worried voice of Stan. He never thought it would be this frustrating, looking at  _him_ , knowing that they were made to break yet he stupidly poured himself out anyway. Why can’t he love without it being spat right back in his face? Mabel, Stan, and now Bill.

Didn’t he, as much as anyone else, deserved to be loved?

But that’s such a selfish thing to wish for. It was always going back to himself, it was always  _his fault_. He let all that sadness and grief and pain boil inside him and it turned him into something he isn’t. But then he had Bill, and for a brief moment everything was okay. They were okay. He was okay. And what they had was too soon to end; it only started to become beautiful again.

But this was for Mabel. F̡or̶ ̴Màb͘e̸l.̵  Because he loved his sister, unconditionally.

“Bill– _urrp_ –Bill,” he set the bottle at his knee, looking at him for all he’s worth, “I-I had a d-dream. Last–last night.”

Bill scoffs, smiling an inch. “Silly, that was no dream.”

“I know, I d-didn’t m-m-mean that,” he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to forget the empty theater and the water tower high above the ground with a deep swig of vodka. Bill is trying very hard not to just go up and grab the bottle from him.

“Then what could possibly have you drinking like this?” Bill frowns, “I mean it, Pine Tree. I told you already. This isn’t good for you.”

Dipper stares at him. “It-it w-was M-Mabel.”

“You always dream about Shooting Star.”

“I-It’s not just a-a nightmare this time, Bill,” Dipper presses, “she– _urrp_ –w-wanted something.”

“You know that’s not really Shooting Star, right? She’s gone, how can she want something from you?”

Dipper’s shoulders fell. “She-she was in m-my head,” he took a swallow, “in my head, Bill! Y-you couldn’t imagine h-how t-terrible she felt! She was asking me, begging me to d-do something for her–“

“She’s not in your head, yeesh, get a hold of yourself,” Bill raised his voice slightly, “It’s your subconscious screwing you over, who knows what it’s done to you.”

“Bill, please, p-please listen,” and he sucked in a breath, like he was too close to drowning. “She-she’s, angry, I-I’ve made her s-so sad, she d-doesn’t want…w-want us t-together.”

The air in the room dropped cold and dense. Such heavy weight in simple words. Bill gazed at him without blinking.

A sob rocked through him and his throat locked up. “I-It’s her, I know it’s her! Like that day in the m-morgue! Bill, she’s so mad at me, at  _us,_ she’s begging me to  _leave you_ , she said I-I’m not putting her first, that I-I don’t love her anymore!”

“Quit it,” Bill snaps. “She can’t ask for anything! She’s a corpse now! Who cares what she wants?”

“But she’s my sister–“

“Mabel is dead!”

It happened in a thin span of seconds – the vodka bottle pelted towards Bill, thrown from across the room. It faintly brushed his ear before driving into the shelf by the alcove curtain, resulting in a shrill, brutal bang of breaking glass. Bill was too dazed to concretely notice everything happening in the same moment, and so he was alarmed when Dipper pounced on him, roughly grabbing him by the collar and all at once pushing him backward, forcefully slamming him against the wall.

In his fit of angered drunkenness, Dipper only saw red. Fierce adrenaline turned his fists into iron while the room disappeared for thick seconds. His blood has turned into alcohol and he viciously glared at Bill, seemingly having forgotten who he was.

“Don’t you  _dare_ say that,” he snarls, voice dripping with rage, but how it cracked the slightest showed an edge of childlike fear, the denial of inescapable truth. “I don’t want to hear that, not from you, Bill.”

Bill, clearly taken aback, stared wide-eyed at Dipper, hands reflexively pulling away at the boy’s wrists. He gulped, surprisingly out of a pinch of fear, because he’s never known Dipper to actually result into this form of aggression. He stayed flat against the wall, frozen solid, and while he didn’t really need to breathe, his pulse was quick and his lungs begged for oxygen.

Suddenly, there was a pattering of footsteps up the stairs, quick and progressive. Dipper’s eyes flickered at the door for a quick moment, and so did Bill’s.

It was, undoubtedly, Stan. “Dipper? Is everything okay?” Comes his muffled voice, “You left the shop and-and there was a crash–“

“You come in and I’ll jump from this chair,” Dipper shouts, every word clear and cold, “don’t think I won’t do it.”

Once out his mouth, Dipper couldn’t afford enough guilt. It’s not like it’s the first time he’s done this to someone, making them believe things. Bill was mortified, mouth hanging, struck hard with how Dipper could use that form of manipulation so heartlessly, even fretting a brief  _what the hell are you saying_ before Stan anxiously speaks again.

“Kid – oh my  _god_  Dipper, please–please d-don’t do anything stupid!”

“Go back downstairs! You have five seconds, if I don’t hear your footsteps I’m kicking off the chair!”

“Dipper,  _please_ , let me help you–!”

“One!”

“Don’t! Please don’t–”

“Two!”

Silence.

_“Three!”_

It took a few moments, but there came heavy steps resounding down the stairs, fast and terrified.

Dipper brings his attention back to Bill, whose hands were clammy on his wrists. It was so ironic, seeing a demon like Bill collecting itself from a staged blackmail suicide. Bill’s eyes were focused on what could be extreme caution.

“Calm down, Pine Tree,” Bill whispers, tone careful and silent.

And there, with building horror, Dipper slowly came to. With the way Bill spoke and looked at him, the anesthesia of selfish anger trickled away, the monster finally slipping off its mask, leaving only a carcass of devastating shame. Blinking several times, the fire lessened, flickered, then died in a haze of smoke, and the only red he saw was his own blood he splattered on his hands.

Fuck, what did he just do? His jaw trembled as the grip loosened. He looked at Bill, as if he had just noticed it was actually him he was pinning into the wall.

He tried to hit Bill, with a bottle of liquor! He didn’t have a speck of remorse, making Stan believe he was attempting to kill himself!

“I’m sorry,” Bill continues, “I won’t say it again. Please calm down, Pine Tree.”

Dipper harshly lets go of him, saying his own  _I’m so sorry_ , and how rapidly the tension diffused left both their heads swimming, even more so for Dipper. Bill slacked against the wall, calming his breaths, while Dipper retreated back to the side of his bed, face in his hands. Harsh morbidity taunted him while he reminded himself again of what he had to do, what he  _needed_ to. It plucked at him mechanically,  _Dipper you need to do this Dipper you need to do this Dipper you need to do this._  It was pitting him closer to delirium.

“You have to leave me, Bill,” Dipper sobs, “I’m–I’m sorry, you can’t, we can’t–she d-doesn’t want y-you to stay, I can’t be with you.”

There it is; he’s pushing away everyone who cared. How many times has he done this? He can never love anyone right. Pathetic.

“Are you mad?” Bill rasps, going towards him, “I won’t leave you, I can’t.”

Bill then lowers himself to Dipper’s level, sitting up on the floor. They were eye-to-eye, and Bill scooted forward so he could gently smooth his fingers through the boy’s hair. In reflex, he managed small, tight grins as he raked through tangles. For a few moments, it was just the two of them in this paper space. Before they knew it, Bill had already taken both Dipper’s tear-soaked hands and cradled them in his own, putting them against his chest and shaking his head.  _No, I won’t leave you, I can’t._

Is he really willing to walk away from this? He can feed himself with lies all over again, promising himself that it’ll all be good when he gives Mabel her wish, but leaving Bill is the last thing he wants.

Leaving the one entity that’s given him happiness is the last thing he wants.

But Mabel…she would loathe him, and he loved her, above anything else.

He painfully held Bill, digging his fingers harder and pulling him closer. While he knew he was grasping at something that’ll soon be gone, he’d rather feel this than nothing.

He sank his eyes in the beautiful deep of Bill’s gaze. He found himself involuntarily tracing the colors in his eyes, the sooty shadow of his lashes over his smooth cheeks. “You have to leave, please,” he croaks, watching Bill’s face crumble, “I need you to leave. Don’t visit me, don’t appear in my dreams, it’s as if I never existed to you.”

“Pine Tree,” Bill’s voice was absolutely hopeless, “Don’t do this to me, I can’t–“

“–No, Bill. I-I have to do this for her. She will know, she’s in my h-head, I can’t bear to hurt her more than I already have.”

Dipper blinked away his tears. He had never seen Bill look so broken. His wonderful eyes, now full of spilling distress, strayed everywhere, on Dipper’s lips, the wisps of brown hair that fell messily over his forehead, then their hands. And god, out of everything to ever happen, Bill began to cry.

Not a sound, just his brows knitted and lips pursed, hushed droplets down his cheeks. It was the most hopeless thing to watch, Bill shaking his head and blinking away tears.

“Is that what you really want?” Bill asks.

Dipper nodded once.

“Remember what I’m here for?” Bill clenches their hands, “To make–to make you happy,” he says with a shudder. “Will this make you happy?”

Dipper, feeling cold wash over him as a tear beaded at the side of his eye, again nodded once.

Bill reached up to wipe at it with his thumb. No one said a thing for a long time.

“Hey,” Bill then says as casually as he can, much like a stinted chuckle, “Hey, Pine Tree. Wanna know something?”

Bill cradled his cheek. Dipper leaned into his touch.

“I never understood why natural calamities like storms are named after people,” Bill manages a smile, but it was like seeing someone arrange heart shapes from bullets. “I’ve always thought they were named after some long-forgotten god or goddess from old-timey tribes and cultures, y’know? Only dumbly translated, yep.”

He’s seen this coping mechanism so many times, it’s eerie. Acting like the problem doesn’t exist, fixing one’s self in a sad delusion. And Dipper, a master of this dismal art, found himself playing – he pretended Bill’s smile was more vivid, that his voice kept it’s active, suave confidence. He pretended there were no tears from both their faces. He pretended this wouldn’t be the last time they’ll hold each other’s hands again.

“So yeah, I thought it was pretty silly. Why name such wonderful destructions after humans?” And here, Bill’s shoulders fell and his smile faltered, “But I understand now, why storms are named after people, because you were my storm, Dipper Pines.”

They only looked at each other, in a way that words fail to describe.

He felt Bill move away to get up, and this caused Dipper to grip harder on him, even losing all hold and pulling him into a tight hug, so close that he could feel his flesh and warmth, pushing his fingers into heady, curling hair. This seemed to break something in Bill, because his reserve breaks and he begins whimpering into the junction of his shoulder, back rocking with sobs.

Dipper’s mind raced. This was it, that ever-spiraling hesitation before the fall.  _It only started, no, I can’t lose you now, please don’t go, it’s too soon, I’ve only realized that I believed again because of you._

They pull back for the sole reason of wanting to see each other’s faces once more.

“Dang it, kid,” Bill mutters, pressing their foreheads together, “I was just supposed to fix your soul. That was it, plain and simple. But I was greedy. Even if I shouldn’t feel anything, I had–I had to love you, too.”

Dipper kisses him; deep, warm, desperate, imprinting to his mind what it was like to kiss him. Bill wholeheartedly kisses back.

Bill passes his thumb over his birthmark when they catch their breaths.

“Please smile,” Bill asks.

Dipper smiled, that harrowing smile only the defeated were capable of.

Bill’s face lit up, but it was the weakened ebb of a dying light. A sad hope filled his eyes as he smiled back, lacing their fingers together one final time. It’s the last of what Dipper felt before Bill disappeared.

 

 

His heart was light and he felt like he was going mad.

If only he could bring past his lips the vodka that had seeped into the wooden flooring when he had thrown the bottle. If only he could go downstairs and drink away everything, his mind, his will, his person. But there was nothing but shards on the floor and a battered soul downstairs. How could he show his face to Stan, after what he had done? How could he show his face to  _anyone?_

His first step into delirium was when he strode out of the attic and went to the bathroom. It had hit him all too hard. He didn’t feel better now that he was done with it. Now that he’s driven away everyone who was there for him, it was no different from the day he was told she was dead. He was wrecked, tragically alone, and this time, there’s no going back.

He was too out of it to make conscious thought of locking the door. He went immediately for the medicine cabinet.

There it was, sitting pretty on the shelf. Shiny plastic of moldy, potent orange. His pallid fingers wrapped around the pill bottle, shaking terribly as he took it out before sinking to the floor, back against the ice-cold wall, knees to his heaving chest.

They told him it’ll help. He was initially prescribed this because he’d go days without sleeping. It would make him incredibly nauseous, but even then he developed a quick although unwanted dependency on the pills because it would be the only thing that at least tried to keep the nightmares at bay. Soon, they increased his dose for depression, after his mother noticed he would take thrice his prescribed dosage and turn out a lot better.

They told him it’ll help. Before, particularly during the first two years of his depression, his mother kept the pills because she couldn’t trust Dipper to stick to the recommended dosage. There were many times he weaseled in a heavy dose out of time because the images just wouldn’t stop and he’d rather have the nightmares asleep than awake, just so he knew what was real. It reminded him how he definitely wasn’t normal anymore. 

They told him it’ll help. How many times did he trail his weary eyes over that viciously clinical label?  _Doxepin 100mg._  Two years ago, it was 150. He remembered how he dreamt horrible things yet always seemed to forget them in the morning, the act of waking up shrouding whatever he dreamed about in whispering secrecy. They still happened, although rarely, because for the past few weeks things were getting better.

Bill smiling at him was the equivalent of a hundred pills.

He didn’t have that anymore.

Dipper popped off the cap, smelling the heavy brittleness of medication and amine. The pills were of a hard-shell, gelatin capsule with a light green opaque cap and white body. These bits of crystalline powder were the only things keeping him together, his tiny little daggers that’ll bring him up to heaven.

He thought about ceasing to exist many times, too many to count. But each time he had a reason not to. Mabel, above anything. His family in California; the parents he knew he loved deep in his heart. Grunkle Stan, whom he now knew still cared, more than that Dipper will ever fathom. Bill.

He found himself internally crying at her. It wasn’t of anger, nor regret. It was hopelessness, a wounded howl of complete and utter desolation.  _Are you happy now?_

Was she laughing at the top of her lungs, smiling her lips to tearing, swishing in her lovely skirt, twirling and dancing in her realm of doors and hallways, singing her own sweet Cecilia? Was she happy now?

 _Let her dance,_ Dipper thought,  _and I will rejoice in the bright of her eyes._ But thinking about her happy face did nothing to ease the pain.

Oh god, he wanted to sleep, because he could no longer take this reality.

Dipper poured two capsules into his palm. Laughing bitterly, he added two more, then three. Seven capsules. 700 mg. What a pleasant thing to think about, swallowing seven times more than a day’s dose. Imagine how deep and dark and exquisite that slumber would be.

For a brief moment, he thought of writing a note:  _Grunkle Stan, I’ll be gone for a little while._ But he’s already killed their delicate line.

He wanted to lose himself, he wanted to feel  _nothing_.

It didn’t matter what he was doing, what he’s done. All sense were tiny flecks of dust blowing in the wind. Just imagine all that sleep…all that heavy, angelic, terrible sleep…

They told him it’ll help.

Dipper emptied the rest of the bottle in his palm. Down came about six or five more. A mound of shiny silicon piled, practically slipping off between his fingers with how hard his hand was shaking.

He brought the edge of his palm to his lips, feeling the first few pills dribble into his mouth. Squeezing his eyes shut, he tipped up his chin to swallow them dry, burning and inherently painful. This downward motion caused the next few pills to fall on his tongue. He swallowed in reflex.

The same process happened over and over, until the only thing he could taste was the skin of his palm as his mouth fought to stumble upon more pills. Finding no more, he forced his throat to take down all the capsules dry, not finding enough will to gather spit in his mouth and use it to slick the way.

He was over the edge, and once there, he found it pointless, even silly, to find his way back.

If he had ingested the pills with water, it would have made the process a lot quicker. But Dipper endured his throat screaming at him to take from the tap, finding his whole body unable to do anything but jitter with a growing cold.

It was slow yet pleasant, engrossing. Was it natural to breathe that little? How long did he sit there on the bathroom floor, watching the tiles and mirrors and curtains all blur together in a hazy clutter? Oh, it hardly mattered now. Sinking was something he welcomed all too much. The pulse in his jugular crippled, getting more feeble as his head lost its patterns. He should have welcomed this numbing chill sooner. He tried to breathe deeply yet all he managed was a snuffle, but he did not worry. Someone could be screaming in his ear and he wouldn’t have heard. It was very peaceful, that inviting expanse of nothingness.

Finally, Dipper closed his eyes.

 

 

Bill stood outside the white picket fence of the Pines' house in Dipper’s mindscape.

Everything about the place was vivid and growing, slightly grotesque. If there was color in that sun, the sky would be clear and burning a bright blue. The flowers in the backyard bloomed full and wild, buds oddly huge, some even going over the walls. They were plump and fresh, giving the idea of being red or pink or yellow even if they were strictly in grayscale. Mushrooms grew a foot from the grass and clung to the mailbox. The apple tree in the backyard was ridden with so many fruits that the grass underneath it was piling up with rotting produce. Worms and insects swarmed on the decay while fruit flies littered up on the branches. Even the house looked more sturdy.

But why the hell was Dipper’s mindscape open? And why was he able to enter it so easily?

If he could enter it, then that meant the boy was unconscious. Why was he unconscious? Bill hoped it was excessive alcohol consumption more than anything. The other answer nagged but he stubbornly ignored it, not wanting to believe such a thing.

These were thoughts that whirled as the triangle floated up to the doorstep, wary of the thick-growing ivy that continued to snake over the brick paths.

He peeked at the front door. Peculiarly, there was a broken rose taped and hanging on it. He was about to reach out and twist open the knob, but paused in a cold sweat as the door slowly, heavily creaked open a very, very small space, just a pinch of ajar.

Braving himself, Bill hesitantly pushed the door open with a hand. More space, more entrance hallway, more pictures on the wall and an umbrella stand with mismatching slippers bellow it, all the way until the door’s inner knob hit the wall with a thud.

There was something that was splashed about everywhere, and from what could be smelled, it was sea water. The atmosphere was a winding vortex of dull sounds. On the walls going inward farther into the house were streaks of black pigment. They were worsened by a web of red yarn messing all over the surfaces.

Bill floated closer inside. He caught sight of a small, thin creature flying towards him, flapping its dark wings. It was a black butterfly, and it landed right beside the brim of his top hat.

He went into the living room. The television was going wild with loud, cringe-worthy static. The light was feeble yet trickled on and off. When he found the switch, a screwdriver had been jammed into it. There were also about twenty other black butterflies flying about. A broken rose was politely taped upon the coffee table. When he looked at the carpet, the original vase of poppies was broken, and it didn’t look like an accident. Someone purposely took it and whacked it away so hard, bits of the vase skidded all over to the kitchen archway.

When Bill made a curious move to touch the rose, wanting to inspect it, the television died into pitch black, crumpled into gray, then displayed a set of angel candles, wicks unburned on top of innocent cherubim heads. The footage was like from a surveillance camera.

And one by one, the candles lit up.

The television zipped to black again.

This wasn’t the weirdest mindscape Bill has entered, but it was starting to get on him.

“Pine Tree?” He called out, unable to hide the worry in his voice, “Are you here?”

The butterflies began to flit about. They mingled upon each other and began to flutter toward the stairs. Bill followed, not without stealing a glance at the kitchen. It looked like someone had cooked a feast; on the center table were multiple dishes of beef and fish and ham, cookies and pie at the sides. However, they were swarmed upon with maggots, ants and cockroaches.

His eye flickered to the glasses of milk, which were still there. One was filled, but it had a small, red clutter of yarn floating on top of it. The other empty glass wasn’t standing anymore; it was smashed to bits all over the counter.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

They were up the steps, butterflies fluttering around him like a swarm of black fog. And he could hear, getting louder and more guttural, with bleeding horror, a wrecked voice of a little girl singing.

_Cecilia, you’re breaking my heart, you’re shaking my confidence daily._

The pictures on the walls of the stairs were hanging with red yarn. Dipper’s image was fading in each one while his sister’s was back in every frame, sharp and vivid, smiling too wide, too bright.

The second floor was submerged in an inch of saltwater, dripping down the steps and corners. On its walls the black butterflies got immensely bigger; one was even the size of an entire bookshelf. They were all hiving together in many scattered areas like bees on a honeycomb. On the ceiling, dry rib bones hung from threading strings of red yarn from varying lengths, and there were flies shooting through those bones. Giant spiders webbed the bones and yarn together, their claw-like, two-foot long legs tapping about the walls and ceiling corners. In the corner of banged-up ladders was a slice of cake, unharmed from ants or other insects. On the lip of the plate was taped a broken rose.

The swarm of butterflies around him led him to the open door of Mabel’s room. Beyond it was an empty room with doors on each wall, hallways beyond those doors and beyond. There were bare footsteps on worn floor, the size of a little girl’s feet. From the pattern, it appears that they have been dancing.

 _Shit,_  he thought,  _not this, please not this._

The butterflies led him deeper. Everywhere there were glass panes broken, bottles of alcohol strewn, and red yarn perpetually speckled in each crook. Bill could no longer deny that inevitable anxiety. The girl’s voice continued to sing, louder and clearer and more frightening,  _Cecilia,_   _you’re breaking my heart, you’re shaking my confidence daily._

The place seemed to get worse the more doors they went into. More broken roses, more pig skeletons immobile and flat on the doorways. Cockroaches the size of palms scurried beneath floorboards in furious speed and disgusting, shrill sounds. Later, he found out that the black pigment was actually old blood and saltwater drenched and mixed together, carelessly splattered on the walls. The same liquid trickled from the ceiling.

They entered into the hallway with only a single door at the end. The cold and worrisome message on the wall had been coded.  _NFCNWJA DZV’RJ MSEFVJNL XZ HJLST DZV’RJ DIAPTOG RJ DOSQJDJYDE ILJLD._ Surrounding it were a jumble of words and phrases all scratched with glass, not making a lick of sense, like a word salad. There were drawings of shooting stars randomly etched in places.

They went past the door, and this time, everything was hued in soft pinks and ash.

Bill was unmoving as he saw her, pausing from her happy prance.

“Bil͝ĺ ͝Ci̵p͟h̡e̡r," she smiled.

He was a demon, yet he felt a chill convulse through him, making his gut wilt.

“You,” he swallowed.

In the middle of the hallway was a girl, but it would be more fitting to call it a monster. The hideous crack through her skull had chipped off cranium bone, revealing a maggot-infested brain to splutter through her hairline. Her morbidly stretched smile had torn away the sides of her lips. She had too many spaces for teeth and too little teeth to fill them while her braces rusted and bled into what was left. The side of her torso was clearly banged into, and he could see a kidney giving away from rotting human flesh.

She was as white as porcelain, with hair tangled like wire. Her whole body was completely drenched in saltwater. Cuts littered her face and limbs, bits of glass stuck to her skin. She seemed like she was choking on her own throat as the same saltwater she was drenched in splashed from her mouth, mixed with either vomit or blood.

“I’ve w͏̨à͢i̢͜t̸̡ȩ́̕d̨̢ for you,” she gladly spoke, “you look well.”

“Don’t play that with me,” Bill lashed, “what the _hell_  are you?”

She laughed. “Oh, and I thought you'͠v̷e ́a̡lr̀eady͢ ̢foun͟d̨ ͟out̡.”

“I have, but–but I didn’t think it’d–“

“Be t̵h͢͟įs͞͏̶ śt̕͘ro͢n̵g͏?” She grinned. “You’ve underestimated me, Cipher.”

She did a little twirl, humming under her breath that sacred tune the boy whistled every now and then. Hearing it in that voice, sung by that monster, made Bill want to lunge at her, at  _it._

“You’re not supposed to grow like this,” Bill stammered, “You’re not supposed to get this strong, hell, you’re supposed to have  _died_ in a few weeks’ time!”

“Tsk, tsk, risky territory, Mr. Isosceles. I don’t think you understand the gravity of human loss.” She cupped her chin in her hand, “Mabel Pines mattered so much to this pathetic waste bag. Her death isn’t a hick and a sob. Look at him. He’s wasted the past four years, and he’s still wasting away, oh so wonderfully.” She looked up at the ceiling, which continued to drip with blood and salt water. “You may know a lot about human behavior, but you know nothing about human emotion, Cipher. Maybe that’s why you blinded yourself into thinking I’m just a p͟e̢tty li̵t̡tle̷ ͠th̛re̛a͡t on the shelf, huh?”

Bill glared at the monster. “Parasite,” he spat with as much venom as possible.

It chuckled. “Do you want to know how e̼͉̣͎͙͕̖ͅà̲ͅṣ̢y̩̱ it was to lure this useless sack of meat into depression?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“I didn’t have to do a thing! He had all the potential, this dog. Four years of the best crop. The power I had! I even made this beautiful little nook for myself and chucked all his good memories in a black hole. Do you know how much energy that needs for a parasite as ‘weak’ and ‘lowborn’ as me?  _D̸͟͜o͞ ̸̢̀yo͘ư͘͡?!_ ” She raised her voice, and it was every terrible sound someone could have the life to hear for. “My kind is your kicking can! The useless pieces of shit that’ll never get anywhere! But lookie now, will you?” It grimly smiled. “I  _own_ him. I own his head! I own his sister’s love, because he’s stupid enough,  _pathetic_ enough to believe a nightmare is his sister! He thinks I’m her, the dim slug! Because he loves her so much, oh my, that it’s so damn laughable!”

And it threw a wild, laughing fit, echoing grossly though out the doors. It’s eyes were dazed and mad, and it sputtered out its own blood. “Fucking humans! Pathetic, meaningless animals! They think love makes them strong. Oh, no. It makes them  _weak._  And  _you,”_ it pointed a finger at Bill, “you’re sinking in it too, I can feel it. You love this poor boy, don'tcha? That’s why you’re willing to throw away the plans for our salvation? Because you love him? Ha!”

She danced around. “And that’s the reason why he’s dying, you bitch. He loves you. He’s never told you that, huh? It’s annoying, taking away all the energy. You know I can’t let that keep happening. Thus the dream. Oh, I could apologize if I meant it!”

It tilted its ugly head at him. “He may love you, but he burdened himself with the loss of his sister  _so much_  that it mutated into fear, and if he _thinks_ something will make his sister sad he’ll stop doing it. That’s the kind of worthless, miserable human you have, Cipher. You stuck yourself in this confusing, webby shit called emotion, and it might just be the worst thing you’ve ever done. But life is made of little concessions. Because you've stupidly bind your hearts, he’s going to die. He’s dying right now, sweetheart. When that happens, all that’s left is for me to suck out the rest from that truckload of Doxepin and I’ll be on my merry way.”

Bill said nothing. He looked exactly like a blank wall.

“Want to know how his soul looks like?” The monster laughed, “you’re looking at it right now.”

And the monster continued to dance, leaving saltwater and blood as it’s dainty bare footsteps, while Bill Cipher, after flickering away, was nowhere to be seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who's in pain? I know I am.
> 
> See you very soon.


	11. The Past Four Years

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let’s die in a beautiful place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I’d like to give my official thanks to Reshii for making this amazing [fanart](http://reshii.tumblr.com/post/133714291696/no-music-no-shows-rich-people-water-s-fanfic) for Howl. My heart still flits whenever I think about it! You are awesome! And we’ve reached 5,000 hits on December 2. Not bad for ten chapters, huh?
> 
> PLEASE READ. If you noticed, I haven’t been replying much to most comments from the previous chapter because of one reason: I have a collective response for all of you.
> 
> Chapter 10 truly was a horrifying chapter. That's coming from the author. Even when I was plotting Howl out for the first time, it had promised itself to be so terrible and gut-wrenching that even thinking about it then sent chills to my gut. The mere idea of the parasite (or Nightmare!Mabel, I like to call it) actually prevented me from ever drafting any pitches for chapter 9 until I really had to write it because I was legit too scared of getting bad dreams at night.
> 
> To actually put Dipper’s agony into words – drinking because you could not forget, numbing yourself to everything for that one last blow, finally taking that lash and succumbing to its consequences – was an almost inhuman experience – I felt myself go numb after Dipper threw the bottle, and I think that’s what made the rest of it so gripping; I forgot the sense of everything and it just...derailed and wrote itself to tragedy.
> 
> Chapter 10 is what makes Howl, and your responses show that it has come to a point where even I do not know what I’ve created. We are all in awe of this tragedy that takes beating hearts for its own.
> 
> I’d like to thank all of you, from the very bottom of my heart, for sticking with me until this crucial point.
> 
> For this month (December 2015), I will be uploading only two more chapters. The last chapter (Ch. 14) will be posted sometime around January next year.
> 
> But everything has a beginning, and everything has an end.
> 
> (Cas, your [comment](http://archiveofourown.org/comments/44644442) blows me away. Thank you and I’m definitely putting that somewhere in this fic’s memoirs like Time reviews on a paperback.)
> 
> P.S. Alcohol negatively interacts with Doxepin. Technically, patients who are taking the drug are advised not to drink. It reacts with the drug and makes it toxic, which can quickly kill a patient.

**Chapter 11**

The twins had looked forward to going on that field trip. For the past week, Mabel was making sure they packed enough snacks and camera film to last a six-hour bus ride and back. They’ve made a road trip playlist, packed spare sun glasses and Mabel’s knitting set, while Dipper stacked up on books.

The trip was school-issued, mainly to get extra credit from the science professor. Half the students in their year were buzzing on leaving the busy city and visiting the tropical sanctuary, yet none of this excitement was centered on getting points at a possible reaction paper – majority was excited for the white sand beach just across from the sanctuary. Mabel was excited about beach volleyball, while Dipper dreamed of a possible mystery hunt.

But on Thursday morning, two days before the trip, Dipper woke up too sick to even get out of bed, pale and slack as a headache made his vision swim. He had caught a cold. This dampened the twin’s spirits, and Mabel sincerely hoped Dipper would get better the following day.

Yet his cold only worsened. For the rest of the day and after, the boy was bedridden, covers to his chin, his mom feeding him warm soup by his bedside. Friday night, Mabel insisted she be the one to nurse Dipper his supper, but she was discouraged in case she caught his cold. Things didn’t change the day of the field trip and Mabel could only stand from his doorway, the snacks and necessities she’s packed in a bag resting by her feet. She was more than disheartened to go on the field trip alone.

But she had to go. They’ve paid for the passage of two and Mabel had no excuse to back out on hers. Plus, what’s the use of preparing everything is she wasn’t going?

There was nothing she could do to help it. The least she could do was make the most of what she had, even if it didn’t include her brother.

And so, disappointed but still smiling, she promised to Dipper, “I’ll have fun for the both of us, Dip-dop. Get better soon. I really wish I could fight off dumb colds! You’ll have another chance, I know. See you when I get back. Love ya.”

And she waved goodbye at her twin. She hiked up her backpack and her big tote of snacks, giving Dipper another sad grin before leaving.

Dipper should have thought of his luck to have such a sister, and how he will never have someone else like her. He should have savored the smile and the sweetness of her voice in those last few moments he had of her, because he never got better, there wasn’t another chance, and Mabel never came back.

 

 

The senior ran upstairs.

His shoes hit wood like the banging of his heart, thoughts ringing in the back of his head – _I can’t lose him I can’t lose him please don’t let me lose him._ Had he been too rough with him when he saw him drinking? Did he let annoyance and shock override compassion? Did he see himself in the boy during that situation, and chose to show a reaction of unpleasantness, just like everyone had done to him, instead of care?

No use thinking it now, oh god, _there was no use of thinking it now._ Hadn’t he learned that all those years ago? Was he never enough? Where did he go wrong, now he’s losing someone he knew he couldn’t bring back, not this time; Stan Pines can’t cheat a neck inside a noose.

Running. Running to the door of the attic and fearing for his life what he’d see.

An empty room.

Stan did not feel a lick of relief. If Dipper wasn’t here, he’d be _there._

Stan Pines never believed in mercy. The years for him had never been kind and he had stopped hoping in an eternality sitting in the clouds, believing it to be a bunch of bullcrap gullible people waste their faith on to have a petty reassurance that life won’t bite them in the ass. But now he was praying, praying harder than he ever did, _oh God, if you really are there, if you exist, please let him live, please let my family live._

He swung the bathroom door open. The boy was against the wall, chin to the collar of his shirt, body slack and pale as frost, limbs spread, no breathing at his chest. The empty bottle of pills was inches from his open palm.

 _No_ , this was the one thought that ran through his head as the world disappeared and all he saw was Dipper. He got to his knees and held the boy’s head, lifting it up to see his blank eyes roll up like a porcelain doll. Stan’s features twisted as the tears swelled away. _No,_ he gathered his body in his arms, _stay awake, please._ The senior shook him, fisted the side of his head and begged _say something, please say something._

But Dipper was silent, and Stan hopelessly grappled for his wrist, pressing in his thumb against the veins.

The boy had a pulse. Soft, almost nothing.

Stan forced himself to think clearly; he hadn’t a moment to waste. He heaved the boy up in his arms, ignoring how he felt like dead weight, and carried him as quickly as he could into the car. Shoving past alarmed gift shop customers, he called up the local hospital and rasped at them to ready the emergency room for a Doxepin-overdosed patient who has consumed alcohol.

He didn’t care if he was going over speed limit; Stan zipped past red lights, honked at pedestrians and didn’t slow the car down until he got the hospital, where a medical team was waiting by the entrance.

They carried the limp boy on the wheeled bed. The ceiling lights shuttered over Dipper’s form as they ran him to the operating room, the senior sputtering out details of Dipper’s condition. He had nothing left in him to fight off the nurse that held him back from the door and he weakly stared from its glass opening.

They drew the curtains, and Stan lost sight of Dipper.

 

 

It took less than two minutes for the heart monitor to go flat.

“Time of death, 11:56 AM,” the doctor announces.

A dull sound fills the room. Beside this blaring chill of death was a solemn reverence.

 

 

Name: [Unknown]

Class: demon (low-born)

Specie: larvae

Nature: parasitic

Prevalence: common

Strength: vulnerably weak

Diet: Negative energy; antihistamines; tricyclic anti-depressants; _eventually:_ souls

Objective: keep a human host to supply them negative energy until the host dies in order to consume their soul

Abilities: tampering with a host’s memories and mindscape; mimic a cause for depression and use it to manipulate the host

Weaknesses: quick to hunger

Lifespan: 1-2 weeks _or:_ as long before host dies

Description: These common parasitic larvae are harmless to a host of healthy or normal emotional state, even to most hosts suffering from emotional instability. They are possibly the lowest class of lesser demons to exist – their validity as demons is often questioned. They are of little to no stronghold and feeble resistance to hunger, having not adapted to unsteady food supply, with strength comparable to that of a worm and a passingly short lifespan, making them one of the most useless demon larvae to exist. They have shown too little importance in the coalition of supernatural activity and therefore have been ignored and categorized as an irrelevant threat to humans.

The primary reason why these parasites have a low success rate is because they mix up signals – they cling to happy hosts because their energy is interpreted as strong negativity.

However, in _extremely rare cases_ , if they stick to a host who constantly interferes with the supernatural and is in a steady state of negativity (i.e. suffering from extreme depression), this parasite has a chance of growing rapidly, since this feeds their strong hunger. Being constantly fed, the parasite can grow into terrifying power and will soon have the capacity to take over a hosts’ mindscape. Once the parasite takes control of the host’s mindscape, the game is over; the parasite can stow away certain memories at will, “lock” the mindscape, and create its own slum among the mindscape’s rooms. They can drive a host to insanity and even completely shut down a host’s body.

In one rare case, the parasite was able to “eat” a physical portion of its host’s brain.

At this state, the parasite is very territorial. It would like to remain in the host until they are able to bring it to death. Thus their uncanny ability to _mimic a cause for depression and use it to manipulate the host_. At this point, the host is bound for death, and the parasite can consume their soul.

Once at this height of power, it is unknown how to kill them. Upon eating the soul, the parasite “deflates” and retires, sinking below radar. They do not die, but they also do not take another host.

But even at its strongest, the parasite is still vulnerable to hunger. _If_ they are unable to consume the soul, that being their final goal, they can be killed by hunger. It is slow and painful for the parasite, like a sophisticated palate adjusting to stale bread.

They are rampant where the supernatural are. They can cling to books, mirrors, clothing, and other materials not harmful to evil spirits. Symptoms are non-existent because they die before any viable traces can be seen (this is also true for them in power; hosts are tricked to believing _it is a figment of their imagination)._

Despite all these capacities, this parasite is naturally harmless.

 

 

“Very soon,” the parasite guffawed, joyfully trotting through its swarming realm. “A little longer, very soon!”

On the floor scurried huge cockroaches, practically toppling over each other as they crept into the rooms. Thick, shiny worms clung and fell from the ceiling. Butterflies coated the space with black. There was a vague dampness that smelled of a salt, blood and sewer.

It was a beautiful mind.

 

 

Outside the Pines’ house in Dipper’s dying mindscape, there was an explosive bloom of color.

Reds, blues, greens – it all slammed back into the picture, saturating and glowing bright against the decaying garden and the crumpling house. It looked all too much for the mindscape’s brittle abundance.

And something walked.

Calling it a ‘thing’ was erroneous, too ugly and lowly. It was vicious in its softness, feral in its brightness, the sweet herald of a thousand angels blessing the ground with its feet. The living would quiver, the dead would flee. It manifested in snowy wisps, and as it further walked, it molded into a form of a divine, youthful girl, her face like the sun. Each step she took closer to the house was a force field that made the plants crimp away, terrified of such virtuous force, while the ground flashed with pearl around her feet.

She was not human. Such integrity wasn’t possible for flesh and bone. Yet she walked with daunting bravery, the lash of a burning star, dignified steps and strong shoulders, as if God Himself ordered her to kill.

She brushed her touch over the door, and from there, the house burned.

While wood and roof went up in wild fire and charcoal smoke, she stepped into the house.

 

 

This realm had one entrance; the locked door of the hall with the cold and worrisome message on the wall. It disintegrated in a sharp crumble when she held her palm above it.

As if a switch was flipped, all was burning white with light. The insects and every terrible little thing scurried away from the sudden majestic presence, it too grand to be contained by the ratty hive. Immediately, ghastly liveliness was replaced by fear. When the swarm had all been cleared and the light had softened back to snowy wisps, there were only two beings left in the realm.

They stood, eyes locked.

The parasite was struck by terror beyond anything else, blinded by her light, yet it stood as straight as it could, it’s beaten and bleeding form making some limbs hang loosely from its torso. Its hideous face cracked up to see, smiling too wide, showing its black teeth. It was hell’s scum in the presence of heaven.

“Ah,” it spat, “you!” And then it sputtered with laughter. “The t-true soul, I see? Ha! Oh, I am _so scared_. So s-scared! Better luck next time, buddy. One brain-damaged roadkill per customer! Oh my, I-I’m shaking in my shoes! What c-could you do to me! Ha!”

Alas, she stepped closer, and the floor shook in respect. The parasite stepped back, shivering violently, but it refused to let go of pride in the face of fear. Any show of joy was wiped from the parasite’s face, replaced with brutality as it stared up at the majesty standing above it.

 _“Get back!”_ It snarls, _“He’s mine! Your pathetic brother is mine! Get back! I own his head! I OWN HIS HEAD!”_ It was suddenly very horrific, gasping as its greying skin welted with little insects popping out of wounds as blood spilled freely from the side of its mouth, murky eyes swallowing up its forehead. It laughed, throaty and big and desperate. _“There’s nothing you can do!  I own his he– “_

The hard slap made the monster bang and skid against the floor, wrangling its neck. It wheezed in pain and tears, for where her hand had touched the parasite’s cheek left its rotted flesh burning. Its flesh continued to sizzle like acid, before diminishing into ash, beginning to swallow unto the rest of the parasite’s face. The burning did not stop, and it was travelling down to the monster’s throat.

“ _Bitch!”_ It screamed, _“You motherfucking bitch! I will rip you to shreds, you fucking whore!”_

It appeared to be in great pain, twitching and gasping and furious that it was powerless.

The girl was not done. She grabbed the parasite by the neck with both hands, raising the hideous body above the ground.

The parasite screamed. Battered feet trembled as it looked for ground and found none. Screaming, screaming, it kept screaming and did not stop. To be touched by something so divine was torture. It could not fight away the young girl’s hands in fear of burning more. It kicked and struggled and cried as it choked on its own ashes.

“Who do you think you are,” the girl spoke, “did you really think I’d let you take my brother?”

Then she let go. The parasite slammed to the floor with snaps of broken bone. Coughing and wheezing as its entire body sizzled and crusted, it shied away from the young girl’s ferocious light.

_“Y-Y-Yghu…c-cagh-n-n-nt….k-k-igh-igh…k-k-ighll…m-m-mghe…”_

“I don’t need to kill you. Here’s what’s gonna happen to you,” she tipped the parasite’s burnt chin, the roasted flesh there glossing with pus, “You’re going to starve. Slowly.”

_“Ngh-ngh-gh-ngho…”_

“Assuming you’ve gotten pretty powerful, you starving will be tragic. You’ll waste away. Just like what you did to him.” And the girl crushed the parasite’s shoulder, making it wail in pain. “You disgust me.”

_“Hgh…h-ghe-h…hghe’s-s…aghl-aghr-regh-d-dy…dgh-degh…eghd…I…I-gh-I…k-k-igh-igh-led...h-highm…”_

“You underestimate me.”

She then knelt down, searching for something hidden inside the parasite’s torn and flayed sweater. She took it between her fingers, snapping the rusty chain as she yanked it off its neck.

The curved, dirtied glass fit perfectly in the middle of her white palm. Inside was a lock of hair, richly brown and clean. The girl held it in a tight fist and gripped until the glass broke. She then let the mess of broken glass and hair shower from her hand down to the cusping, blistered form of an overgrown larvae leech trembling bloodied and burnt at her feet.

“Sucka,” Mabel glared before vanishing, leaving the crumbled realm in deep, defeated darkness.

 

 

The sea below the cliff is calm, washing over the reddened rocks at the riverbank. The smell of salt is soft while the sound of the waves folding serenely caressed his ears. Deep and kind and blue are the waters, stretching farther than the eye could see. The horizon is cloudless in the peak of a four o’clock.

The bank of the Pacific Coast Highway is as peaceful as its empty road. Paradise.

Dipper opened his eyes.

He was sitting a little ways from the edge of the cliff, knees bent in front of him as he sat up.

“Hey, brother.”

Dipper turned to his side. It was Mabel.

She looked exactly like that day when he last saw her, the sweet sister of his younger years lingering by his doorway. Still fifteen, with bright eyes, rosy cheeks and the sun in her smile, she regarded Dipper with warm fondness. The subtle wind made a part of her hair flutter gently. She looked pleasant, not a bruise on her, while her clothes were dry and clean. Her braces were silver, her headband with a big ribbon and little white flowers, while she smelled of peach lip gloss and graham crackers. If he looked closely, he’d find she was wearing earrings of stars wearing shades. Her left wrist had colorful candy bracelets peaking from the sleeve of her sweater.

Why was he permitted to see something so wonderful?

“Been a while, huh?” She chuckled.

It took some time to get the words out. “Am…am I dead?”

Sadness pierced her smile. “Yes.”

And in that one word, Dipper remembers everything. The dream, drinking in the kitchen, fighting with Bill, staging a suicide, Bill leaving. All that has led to taking that pill bottle out of the cabinet.

Mabel hugs him first. Dipper had always been insecure about showing any signs of pain. Once given this gateway, he sinks into the younger girl’s arms, taking bitterness in how small she still felt, that this what she was like when she sank in that bus, but however this may, she was nothing but love. The hug from his sister he had longed to have for the past four years was nothing but love.

He was sobbing, hugging her like he was afraid she’ll disappear any moment. Mabel cradled his head on her shoulder, her cheek against the side of his hair.

Both were reluctant about breaking away. When Mabel pulled back, she was teary-eyed, lips pursed to trembling, yet she forced herself to be collected.

“I’d say I’m happy to see you,” she rested her palm against Dipper’s cheek, “but what kind of person would I be to say I’m happy to see my twin brother dead?”

“I’m so sorry,” Dipper spoke, and he could say no more, because he realized how useless it was to apologize at this point.

“I know you are. And I forgive you, for everything. But you and I, we have to talk.” She sighed. “Please listen, and as much as possible, you don’t need to say you’re sorry. I know. Understand?”

“I understand.”

“So first things first, what has been happening in your mind. You’ve had a recent nightmare, right? And…you believed that was me?”

“That wasn’t you?”

Mabel gripped Dipper’s wrist, crestfallen. “Dipper, why would you ever think that I would want you to do something that would hurt you?”

Dipper heaved another sob. These were words he wished he had before.

“I’d never want to hurt you, Dipper. Never. You’ve gone through so much because of my death and I know, trust me, I know that it left you a real shabby mess. It was so painful to see my brother unable to help himself and just waste away while I couldn’t do anything about it. How can I be at ease when I know someone I care about is sad?” She held back tears that threatened to slip, breathing in deeply. “You were already happy, with Bill. I was proud of you, believe me. For once in four years you felt genuine happiness, and having you d-die is the last thing I want to happen.”

Dipper soaked it all in, the joy and grief so great that it reverted back into numbness.

“Listen closely. The thing you thought was me is some sort of parasitic lesser demon. I don’t know much about it, but here’s the gist; this parasite was feeding off your depression and it was using my image in your head to trick you into staying as its food source. Whatever that parasite was, it wasn’t me.”

The boy nodded, yet Mabel did not ease her tears. In fact, a tear escaped down one reddened cheek.

“I just d-don’t understand. The only question I’m asking is why would you ever think that was me? Did you really believe your sister could be that selfish? Telling you to throw away everything that made you happy after all those years you weren’t? I know that I was pretty selfish at times. I know that it got you into some trouble. But no matter how selfish I was, I would never make you do s-something like that! You lost so much. I would never make you ruin everything you’ve worked so hard to have again.”

Mabel then smiled faintly. “I also want you to be happy, Dipper. Maybe even more than you do yourself.”

Dipper was so stunned, so struck by this rapid progression of reality that he felt a thick anesthesia working through him, preventing him from reacting too much to all that he was processing. He could do nothing but stare at her, breathing bated with an expression of regret and hope.

“I’m your sister,” she said with vigor, “Mabel Pines. That name bleeds rainbows and cupcakes and smiles. I want you to be happy above anything else. That’s the one thing I’m wishing for you.” She gripped him by the shoulders.  “Listen to me. You deserve to be loved. And I love you as much as you love me. Do not think for even one second that isn’t true, understand?”

Mabel fixed her eyes at him. It took Dipper a few moments to nod.

“Good,” Mabel said, a little out of breath. “Good.” Her hold on him softened. She was silent for a few moments before speaking again. “Remember what I said before I left, outside your bedroom door because you were too sick and Mom would throw a fit if I stepped foot inside your room?”

Dipper closed his eyes. How could he forget the last words she said to him? “Like yesterday.”

“I said you’ll have another chance, right?”

Dipper stared at her. “Mabel, just _how_ can you possibly – “

“Definitely unconventional and definitely justified. Morality is relative, Dippin’ sauce. Look at you! Do you think I’d let you end this way? Dead at nineteen, self-administered overdose, vodka, teary break up with dream demon boyfriend that qualifies for a John Green novel? Nu-uh. I just can’t have that for you. You aren’t gonna kick the can like this. You have your whole life ahead of you. You’re going back. You have to. I don’t want you to end up leaving like you thought they left you.”

She then stood up, beckoning Dipper to do the same. “Alright, you can’t stay dead for long. Your body is currently being pinned a time of death. You have to come back before they stain a record.”

Dipper got up, feeling the world suddenly get wider around him. He found himself holding at Mabel’s elbow for balance.

“Oh, and about Bill!” Mabel began. “Let me just say that he’s gonna take some getting used to. I’m still piecing together all that might end up not so well with him. But I see that under all that sass and crazy ideas, Bill does care about you, in a way that I’ll need to squint to understand. I guess I’ll never really know how he loves you, but I know that he’s given you something good. He’s given you happiness. And some stupid brain leech shouldn’t get in the way of that. You deserve what you guys have. Please, when you get back, you find him. You find him and you apologize, and you hope to God that you guys sort out your mess. You two have something. Make this second chance count.”

Dipper swallowed it all down. “I promise.”

Mabel grinned. “Well, that’s everything. And despite all this, it was nice seeing my twin brother again.” She opened her arms. “Awkward sibling hug?”

Dipper was more than happy to oblige. “Awkward sibling hug.”

Dipper had to bend down slightly because Mabel was pulling at him, her being stuck in a fifteen-year-old body, but nevertheless, it was nice to know she wanted to hug him as much as he did. There came the pats, and they pulled back with smiling faces.

“I hope that when I see you again, you’re old and wrinkly like Grunkle Stan – oh, speaking of. Never do that to him again! Dick move, seriously. He’s just looking out for you. When you wake up, say sorry. And don’t try to pull that stuff on anyone ever! Just don’t, okay?”

Dipper didn’t try to hinder his embarrassment. “Okay, I’m sorry.”

Mabel sighed. “Just, be good in general.” She then rolled her eyes, beaming again. “Cheer up. Your sister loves you. Remember that.”

The boy smiled. “I love you too, sis.”

“Ready?”

“For what?”

“Jumping, that’s what.” She gazed down into the peaceful, deep waters below the cliff. Dipper followed her eyes. “It’s your heaven’s escape pod. The passage to life, bro bro.”

“I-I have to jump?” He gulped.

“Heaven has secret rules, especially when a soul is dying or has just died. You can still come back to the living if you overcome something you fear. For most, it’s a terrible memory they need to watch again, or they should face a truth they’ve been avoiding. For you, it seems, your fear is the sea.”

Pretty obvious why. Dipper could hardly breathe, looking over the edge of the cliff.

Mabel held his wrist. “You can do this, Dipper.”

“I can’t,” Dipper croaked, “y-you died there. With thirty other people. I-I can’t.”

“Hey, hey,” Mabel called, making Dipper face her. “I’m right here. Right beside you. You don’t need to be scared, I am your flesh and blood sister and I am right here. You can do this. I believe in you.”

Dipper inhaled and let it out in a shaky exhale, taking steps to face the edge. “Mabel, I can’t.”

“You can. I am better than my corpse. Please believe in that, Dipper. I’m right here.” She gripped harder on him for emphasis.

Dipper closed his eyes. Mabel. The Mabel who was bloom in all his days, the Mabel who put sprinkles in everything she ate and didn’t. Mabel who shaved through her hair on picture day when they were kindergarten, who made a Valentines card for him out of everything she got because he didn’t get even one. Mabel, who was whimsical sweaters and too much sugar, who was lovely while she was silly, the perfect example of cool and weird and precious all in one. The girl he’s spent fifteen years of his life with and shared the womb, five minutes older and still the best person he will ever have the luck of spending what little part of his life with; his twin sister.

“I’ll miss you,” Dipper whispered.

“I’ll miss you too, bro bro.”

Dipper felt Mabel step back, felt her hold slip from his wrist. Suddenly, it was as peaceful as when the pills were sinking into his blood. He fought the vicious ache of his heart to grab at his sister again. Now is not the time to die for her. He heard the rocks from underneath his feet roll down the edge and dared not look at where they end.

“Goodbye, Mabel.” He said at last.

“Goodbye, Dipper.”

He closed his eyes and took the plunge.

 

 

A senior was seated in the waiting room, sweating at the forehead, his hands trembling fists over his mouth. He was looking around anxiously with yellowed, teary eyes, alone among all those empty chairs. Every few moments, he’d take a sharp, shuddering breath.

Abruptly, he froze when a doctor swiftly walked toward him and stopped. “Stanford Pines?”

He stands up, anxiety so great his body just stopped responding. “Y-Yes? How’s my grandnephew?”

The doctor nods curtly. “Your grandnephew is safe.”

It looked as if all the weight of the world lifted from the senior’s shoulders. He sighed with a smile, eyes squeezed shut and a hand supporting at the wall beside them. “Thank God.”

“I’d say it was a miracle,” the doctor continues. “Your grandnephew had a serious amount of alcohol in his bloodstream, which would’ve immediately become poisonous when Doxepin interacted with it and should have instantly killed him. However, your brave boy bounced back just when the monitor went flat.”

“That’s my Dipper,” Stan says, “fighting back. Can I see him?”

“Of course.”

They went up a floor and entered a third room from the elevator. Dipper was laid in a raised bed of light blue sheets, an IV taped to the fold of his elbow and a heart monitor proudly beeping away.

“He’s asleep,” says the doctor.

“When will he awake?”

The doctor says nothing.

“Doc?”

“Mr. Pines, your grandnephew is currently in vegetative state.”

And without it being said out loud, Stanley knew.

Dipper was in a coma.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Did you really think I’d kill Dipper ~~permanently~~? Jesus. So that ends the first full arch of Howl. What a fucking ride.
> 
> The next three chapters will consist of the final arch. Here's a few details for the next chapter so you don't get a shock; a previous character will hold an autonomous role. You know this character very well. Expect theater/modeling references and the plot to take a swerve into community churches and neon lights. Wanna take a guess?
> 
> We'll be seeing each other [soon](http://even-stars-disappear.tumblr.com/).


	12. Dust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Blessed are you in the temple of your holy glory, praiseworthy and glorious above all forever._
> 
> _Blessed are you on the throne of your kingdom, praiseworthy and exalted above all forever._
> 
> _Blessed are you who look into the depths from your throne upon the cherubim, praiseworthy and exalted above all forever._
> 
> -(Responsorial Psalm, Dn 3)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Merry Christmas, everyone! *hugs* This is the chapter I’ve looked forward to writing the most (reel back to Chapter 3 where I first hint at the character that will take an autonomous role). The previous arch will be all wrapped up in a bow. After three chapters of agony, you deserve this! Also hello again, Ranter!
> 
> The following events after I wrap up the previous arch might be quite unexpected for some. So far, I haven’t read any fanfic that tackles the topic. I just might be testing the waters. But I do believe those characters deserve a good story.
> 
> I'd like to thank shppa for being my Beta for this chapter! Anon from Tumblr, bless you. Anon from last chapter, I like your moxie.
> 
> This chapter is very long, more than 8.5k. Do not rush it. Breathe it in.

**Chapter 12**

The heart monitor plucks the silence, spiraling on and on, the only sign of life left on that frail body. Slow and steady, too flat, too abrupt, too piercing. That brutal plucking was its own universe mocking ours.

Stan was dozing off in the chair by the boy’s sleeping body, kept partly awake to hear the icy beeps of the machine. It was testimony that he was alive and that was what put Stan to sleep at night.

The plucking rose higher.

Beep…Beep… _Beep beep beep beep beep._

A cold wash drenched Stan’s mind awake. His bleary eyes stared at the machine. It was spiking up hard. Dipper’s heart was beating so fast, the plucking transcended into itself. After months of flat silence the room was awoken. Stan quickly scanned for the nurse call button, yet his fingers froze on top of the red switch when his eyes met his grandnephew’s sickly face.

The boy was struggling to keep his sunken eyes open, tears already soaking the pillow. Dry lips mouthed a name, _his_ name, a guttural little ache of letters –

"Stan…Gru-Grunkle Stan…” 

All at once, Stan got to his feet and jammed his fist on the nurse call button. It already looked as if he had escaped from a war when he stood over Dipper’s bed, speechless, brows knotted and mouth stuttering.

"...I-I’m…I’m s-so…s-sorry…" 

Stan gripped the railing of Dipper’s bed, straining himself not to gather the boy in his arms and possibly unhook him from the IV and the oxygen mask delicately draping off to his side. The world was collapsing into the tip of a pin–he dared not think nor move nor speak. Dipper was doing his best, oh, _he was doing his best_ just to say it again, his very hardest, _I’m sorry I’m sorry,_ forcing out the words as loud as he could, yet they only came out in weak, clumsy whimpers.

There are no words to fathom the look on his great uncle’s face. It was every kind of meaning human emotion could physically manifest, hinting onto divinity. There was brimming joy and gratitude, yet with it came desperation and fear.

“Don’t fall asleep, please,” he begged, “please stay awake, Dipper _please_ , stay awake, stay awake, look at me, look at your g-great uncle,” Stan then cupped Dipper’s clammy cheek with a shaking hand. Dipper continued to sob out his apologies, _I’m sorry I’m sorry_ , no repetition close to satisfying the boy. Each apology struck knives into the senior’s heart. Here Dipper was, waking up from sleeping death, only to sob out apologies!

“The n-nurses are coming, Dipper, you have to stay awake – “

"I’m s-so sorry!" 

“I know,” Stan’s voice cracked, “I know, dammit, I know, kid. It’s okay, d-don’t cry,” and Stan wiped the new wave of tears from Dipper’s cheeks, “You’re okay now, you’re s-safe now, stay awake, please!”

Stan could barely see through his glassy vision, but even through the blur, he could see Dipper try his best to blink his eyes wider, the boy’s mouth straining into a painful smile, and until that moment, Stan had never truly understood what the meaning of hope looked like.

 

 

Dipper had, apparently, just woken up from an eleven-month long coma.

The hour Dipper was announced in vegetative state, Stan immediately phoned his parents. They took the first flight to Portland and from there, the first bus to Gravity Falls. Mr. and Mrs. Pines arrived the night after. Both his parents were in terrible distress; Dipper was, under all circumstances, their only child left, and losing one was already devastating. The idea of almost losing the other was bone-chilling. Stan had stopped trying to contrast which parent had the greater reaction to seeing their son breathing through a mask and lying weightless – their breaking down was incomparable. To watch their only son waste four years through depression, stuffed chock-full of pills and useless counselling, then eventually end in attempted suicide was something Stan didn’t want to imagine if ever he was a parent.

Then came the storytelling.

He recounted it all shaking hands and teary eyes. “In the mornin’, I found him drinkin’ pretty heavily in the kitchen. He d-dug up my whiskey. Wouldn’t tell me why, b-but I guess it’s because I was s-shocked and kinda lashed out on him, but I swear I didn’t mean for it to be this way –“ he frequently had to stop, because the lump in his throat made speaking difficult, “– he went upstairs, I don’t know what happened exactly, but m-my other employee wasn’t in the gift shop after Dipper left the breakfast I made for him, so I had to assume they were upstairs. Then I heard a crash, a big ‘un. It might’a been a window or a bottle. So I go up, I’m about to go in when Dipper – he just, he told me he’d count to five, if I’m not downstairs the boy would’a _jumped from a chair._ ” Dipper’s father shuddered, while his mother fisted her coat.

“But I just couldn’t let him. I begged him not to do it but he counted, one, two, then at three I couldn’t risk it and went downstairs. I waited for footsteps or the door to open, but I was still so – so scared of going up, his threat had friggin’ branded into my head, but something just _snapped_ and I had to go up and check on him. I went upstairs, s-scared for my life only to see he ain’t in the attic. But I didn’t feel he was safe – I ran to the bathroom, and Christ, h-he was there, not a breath on him, pale as hell, sprawled on the floor, and that damned bottle of pills rolling near his hand. It was empty! Jesus – I check that bottle every morning to see if he takes his doses, just like what you asked me. There were fourteen in that thing and the boy took ‘em all down the hatch, for God’s sake!

“He couldn’t be alive. I thought he was dying, I shake him and he don’t say no words. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I grab his wrist and I hammer my thumb in ‘ere, and I thank all that’s a speck of holy because he has a damn pulse. I ain’t wasting a second, I get him outta the shack, I drive so fast I’m sure I broke some laws, and now–now he’s lyin’ there. I’m sorry. I wasn’t able to stop him. Believe me, I would have done anything. I’m sorry.”

It took some time for Dipper’s mother to speak, her voice only a quiver. “It’s not your fault. You did your best. Thank you.”

And the parents collapsed into each other, husband gripping wife.

A week after observation in Gravity Falls Municipal, his parents moved him to a bigger hospital in California, where they could have him closer and get him a better doctor. At Stan’s request, the senior was able to visit Dipper three days a month. He slept in his hospital room. Somehow, he felt responsible of the boy in his state. He slept to the heart monitor beeping quietly.

And at the eleventh month, Dipper awoke.

Opening his eyes to the world was an oddly resurfacing feeling. After the floodgates of emotion closed upon seeing Grunkle Stan, Dipper reverted back into a numb, uncertain state. It felt as if he had spent too long underwater and suddenly forced back into oxygen. For the first few days he awoke, Dipper barely talked. He stared at nothing, his face halfway between thought and blankness. He was realizing the room, the people, his world, and life all over again. Dipper was someone who was pushed into chaos, into madness, and was suddenly spat back out fragile to reality.

To alleviate this, Stan presented Dipper with post card letters his friends back in Gravity Falls had written him upon hearing the news that he had fallen into coma. There were seven from Wendy, five from Pacifica, and twenty from Soos. Even Lazy Susan made him one.

There was nothing from Bill. Dipper hid the frown and smiled at what he still had.

The first night Dipper slept upon waking up from the coma, Stan feared he’d never wake up again. He’s heard of a few cases like that, patients slipping back into coma at sleep. All night he forced himself awake, just so he could still hear the beeping of the heart monitor until exhaustion shut him down. At morning, he jolted awake, feeling as if a snake balled up in his throat until he saw Dipper, sitting up on his bed, fully awake. The boy was nibbling on a wafer from the pack his father put there on his bedside.

“Morning, Grunkle Stan,” these were Dipper’s first words to him since the repeated apologies. “Wafer?”

Stan let out a breath.

Dipper was discharged soon. He insisted Stan wait for him before travelling back to Gravity Falls. Dipper’s doctor, having known the boy had a history of depression, along with waking up from the coma, advised his parents to “be lenient with him” and if ever they were to set rules, “do so gently.” They took the advice as law, and so benevolently asked Dipper to remain in California for a few days in order for him to adjust. They gave him a run-through of events. He had missed his second year of college, but that was negotiable. He had turned twenty and was a month away from being twenty-one. He’s permanently off Doxepin and will be prescribed a softer medication after a period. Dipper took in all of these thoughtfully.

They also gave him a phone, something Dipper’s doctor insisted. Contact with their son, even through voice call, was recommended.

One day, Dipper pulled Stan aside. “Have you heard of Bill?”

“Not in eleven months, kid. Sorry.”

“He didn’t come back?”

“Ain’t seen even his shadow.”

That night, he hoped he would dream of him. But just like every other night, his dreams were blank.

_I need you to leave. Don’t visit me, don’t appear in my dreams, it’s as if I never existed to you._

Dipper wanted to see him. He tried to summon him countless times, yet each attempt was futile. It was looking like Bill was fulfilling his request through tooth and nail. In the end, Dipper had no one to blame but himself. In his head, those lovely words Bill had said bitterly replayed. That he was his storm, that they were a wonderful destruction, that Bill loved him.

And in his head, he softly said, that he loved him too.

Soon, his parents told them they were ready to leave California and be back at Gravity Falls. Dipper and Stan packed their bags.

“Promise me you’ll take care of him,” Dipper’s mother asked Stan before they left, when Dipper was already in the car with his father in the driver’s seat.

Stan curtly nodded. “I promise.”

In the bus ride back to Gravity Falls, Stan was clearly more tamed towards his grandnephew.  The senior would smile more often at him and wouldn’t let Dipper carry anything heavy. He offered him food and didn’t ask twice when Dipper declined. When Dipper tugged at Stan’s sleeve to tell him something, the senior was quick to listen.

Yet there was one question Stan dared to ask; it was through a mouth full of potato chips after he drabbled on about getting the boy’s documents from his previous doctor first thing after they got settled.

“What’re you really gonna do in Gravity Falls, kid?”

Dipper stared out the bus window. “I’m going to find Bill.”

 

 

Returning to the shack was like sinking back into normality. The attic was visibly cleaned out. Dipper’s bed had no sheet, and there was a white cloth over Mabel’s side of the room, surely to keep away dust. Dipper took it away and pulled back the sheets on his bed. He sat at the corner, staring at that spot near the shelf where he had thrown the vodka bottle.

They leave for the hospital in an hour. Dipper went to get dressed.

 

 

He did not remember the hospital. It was understandable. Natural, even; he was unconscious when Stan rushed him there and remained unconscious his whole stay. Stan pointed out his old hospital room when they passed by it on the way to the third floor, where his previous doctor held office.

His eyes wandered, he stared at each door. Stan seemed to know the surroundings well. When they got to his previous doctor’s office, a small woman in her thirties with her hair in a tight bun greeted them with professional disinterest.

Stan, the ever-charmer, discussed Dipper’s case in a lighthearted tone. A fake spark lit up in the doctor’s face and she stood up to check the endless rows of record she had around her office. Pines, Pines, she muttered under her breath.

She already pulled out his record and was shuffling about through documents with Stan bringing papers of his own. The whole situation was like watching paint dry to Dipper.

He tapped at Stan’s knee and asked for a dollar to use for the vending machine. Stan was easy to slip him a stray note from his pocket.

He exited the office. Something was bothering him.

He swore he’s heard that name before.

Patients in wheel chairs and nurses with their clip boards were figments of the hallway. He briskly walked to the stairs, folding the dollar in his pocket, stepping down into the first floor. He and Stan had passed by that certain hall with that certain door. He kept his eyes on the left side of the quiet hallway, slowing his step when he neared door 132, 133, and he then paused at 134.

Dipper focused on the name placard sloppily inserted into the plastic holder. _Jehan Brent._

Jehan.

Where did he hear that? It was like trying to remember the thoughts before sleeping. He swore that name sounded familiar, but the more he thought, the more he lost hold of it.

Dipper knocks on the door.

“Come in,” says a muffled, foreign voice.

He hesitated. He couldn’t tell if the voice belonged to whom he believed it to. Heart skipping a beat, he took the knob and swung open the door. A face so intimately painted in his head stares back. They lock eyes, frozen into each other’s gazes.

“Bill?”

A gentle face, like a young lady’s, looks at him, confused. “Pardon?”  Yet at the same second, his features were brushed with surprise. His soft eyes, albeit a little wide, were searching Dipper up and down. Lips parted, brows raised, he continued in a little voice that Dipper barely heard, “Oh dear.”

Dipper, too, was beginning to realize something, yet he refused to believe it was true. Impossible. It was _supposed_ to be him. Feeling a break in his chest, he gripped the knob behind him harder. No, no, no, this shouldn’t be, Bill would never have done it. Dipper looked at him for all he’s worth, straining to find on him a trace of the demon. He found none, but he didn’t want to believe it. “Bill, please tell me that’s you.” His voice was crumpling. He felt hope dwindle with each word. Nothing breaks faith more than pointless desperation. “Please tell me that’s you, Bill. Please.”

The young man was struck, with what? Dipper couldn’t pinpoint. It’s stabbing it him, how the features of that face differed infinitely from what he had been so fond of. There was no playful sneer, no confident eye.

“I’m sorry, I’m not – I’m not who you’re looking for.” The voice was the same voice, yet it didn’t sound right. It was too shy and scared and feeble, just _so different_ from Bill’s puckish, frisky tone. Bill wouldn’t even sound like that if he was whispering. Dipper could see his bottom lip trembling.

“Christ,” he found himself muttering, “Jesus fucking Christ.”

The face that looked at him was far too gentle, soft to the point of delicacy. It was there for him to swallow; this wasn’t Bill, not anymore. Just the empty vessel, the stripper, the beautiful young man that put his soul on the line.

All these details rushed back like waves. He was caring less and less about the vessel. Suddenly, it didn’t matter to Dipper that this was actually someone that got dragged into shit. He had the urge to cry out, to scream at him, even if the vessel had no fault. Anger always looks for something to blame. His mind made petty excuses, trying to channel all that frustration into something and fuck, it was so hard, so fucking hard to resist blaming the frailty lying in that hospital bed.

“Then where is he?” Dipper said. It came out louder than intended, and he watched the vessel make a small reflex of backing up in his bed, fluttering the IV taped to his forearm.

“I don’t know, I swear,” the vessel quickly sputters out, “I’m sorry, I don’t know.”

His voice alone would have made the murderer guilty, but Dipper’s sense of morality was thinning. He knew Bill was no longer there yet he refused to back down. There was more grief than anger in his words when he says, “You don’t know? You’re Bill’s vessel and you don’t know?” He can’t justify his frustration with anything valid, but he just couldn't bring himself to stop. “You can’t just – just say that, you’re his damn vessel, you should at least have an idea!”

The vessel winced at the volume of his voice. He looked too afraid to say anything; he had bitten down on his lower lip. Something about his face was littered both timidity and sympathy. It was as if he was agreeing with Dipper; that yes, he was useless because he didn’t know Bill’s whereabouts. Glassy eyes were too frightened to blink.

For a few bleeding moments, his heart was stone that thought the vessel’s dread was fair, that his anger was justified. He forced this thought to last, yet he could not continue being a fool to it for long. He looked at the vessel who couldn't defend himself. Guilt came gushing in. A high that burns quick dies fast. He was suddenly a wounded animal Dipper frightened with a weapon. He realized there was a reason why the vessel was in the hospital and he didn’t even initially consider that.

Dipper slumped against the wall. He closed his eyes, ashamed of looking at the young man he had raised his voice at. He was suddenly very sorry, yet he couldn’t get the words out from sheer remorse. He didn’t mean for it to happen. He didn’t want to yell. He just wanted to have Bill back, but that didn’t make anything better.

As abruptly as he came in, Dipper left, closing the door behind him.

 

 

“Hey, can you bring that pie to the doll in 134?” The supervisor at the desk calls to a passing nurse.

The nurse clipped her board in her arm and took the pie, still in a baking tin, from the counter. “To whom?”

“The dollish blond fella in 134, the one that checked himself in two days ago.”

“Liver check?”

“Yep, as always for the past eleven months. Weird, really.”

The pie was still very warm. If it wasn’t coated in cling wrap, the nurse would have taken a whiff. It was either cherry or apple, judging from the stripes that revealed a red pudding.

“Who’s this from?”

“The guy that came in with his grandfather yesterday, y’know, the lanky one named after a bucket. Dipper Pines.”

The nurse nodded and walked to the stated room, 134. Knocking, she swung the door open and greeted the blond man good morning. “Hello, chap. Got something for you.”

“Hello,” the dazed patient greets back.

“This pie came in for you this morning,” the nurse places it at his bedside, pushing away the telephone to make space. “Man, you’re lucky. Enjoy.”

“Who was it from?”

The nurse couldn’t help raising a brow at the quiet little voice. “Dipper Pines, I’ve been told. It’s still warm.” She went to the small cupboard that came with the hospital room and took one of the two saucers in the stand, along with a knife and fork, placing them at the bed near the patient’s hand, who looked to be pondering something.

“Thank you,” he spoke, “may I request something?”

“Depends, chap.”

“May you call a number for me?”

The nurse smiles. “Phone on your bedside.”

“Ah, um, I don’t think I should call personally.”

Slowly, the nurse understood. Also, this patient was someone that couldn’t be said ‘no’ to. He was just too adorable. “Alright, chap.”

“Have you got a pen?”

The nurse took one from their pocket. The patient had the number memorized, and she hastily scribbled the digits on paper.

“Please ask Dipper Pines to come visit me this afternoon, thank you.”

“’Aight, got it,” she clipped her board back in her arm, “you enjoy your pie, doll.”

The nurse left the room with a jolly shake of her head.

“How was it,” said the supervisor when she passed back to the front desk.

“I’ve been given a number. Seriously, if these young blokes are tryna’ pitch, they should just leave the employees alone.”

“Fella's charming, ain’t he?”

The nurse just shrugged.

 

 

Dipper was nervous.

It was a day after he had entered the vessel’s hospital room and yelled at him. Just that afternoon, after he and Stan had eaten lunch, he answered the Mystery Shack’s phone to have a nurse from the hospital on the other side, saying that a Jehan Brent was requesting him to visit.

That morning, it was an undoubted decision for him to go to Greasy’s, much to Lazy Susan’s pleasant surprise, and buy an entire cherry pie that had just been newly baked. He remembered that Bill let slip of the vessel’s cherry preference.

He didn’t have enough courage to deliver the pie by himself. Instead, he left it on the front desk, telling the supervisor that the pie was for the patient in room 134. Now, he stood right in front of it. He glanced at his wristwatch. About two in the afternoon. He had excused himself from cashier duty, saying he’ll be off to the hospital, much to Stan’s curiosity.

He was dillydallying. He couldn’t even stand properly, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He felt the minutes pass by, but they were certainly just seconds. He could sense, from the side of his eye, the nurses in the front desk looking off at him.

Dipper lowered his head. If not now, when?

He puffed out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and knocked. Again, the muffled, foreign voice bade him to enter.

Dipper opened the door, stepping into the room. The vessel was sitting up, hands folded on his blanket-covered lap. He regarded Dipper kindly, with a shy smile.

“Good afternoon,” the vessel says. “Please come in.”

Dipper was suddenly hit with more shame. All that he did to him yesterday, and he was being greeted with a smile? Dipper’s perspective of the vessel was hurtled sideways. He had the embarrassing thought that he truly did not know what he was dealing with.

He sputtered, not knowing what to say first. “I-I, well, good afternoon too,” he begins, walking closer to the vessel. The boy felt like he was trespassing some divine force field just by standing next to his hospital bed. His gaze briefly passed the pie sitting on the bedside. Two slices had been eaten. “Look, um, I-I’m very, very sorry for what I did yesterday, that was really rude. I shouldn’t have taken out my frustration on you, I’m sorry.”

The vessel nodded, still smiling. “It’s okay, really. I understand.” He then held out his hand for Dipper. “We haven’t formally met, yeah?” He looked Dipper in the eye, wherein Dipper could no longer sustain proper eye contact. “I’m Jehan.”

Dipper took his hand to shake. His hand was soft-skinned and slender, like a teenage girl’s. The grip was warm and the handshake lasted until Jehan pulled off. Dipper felt his skin prick. It’s as if he was touched by something holy. “Dipper. Dipper Pines.”

Was Jehan aware of his effect on people? When he looked at people, he looked at them full-on, or maybe it was just because he was too damn attractive. Dipper settled for directing his eyes at a spot on the wall behind Jehan’s head.

“How did you know I liked cherry?”

“It’s hard to forget Bill stuffing his face with it at Greasy’s,” Dipper replies.

“I believe we have a lot to talk about,” Jehan starts. “I almost forgot how you looked like, honestly. Take that chair and sit by my side, would you?”

Did that mean Jehan knew him? Hazy questions birthed other questions while Dipper dragged the chair against the wall to Jehan’s bedside.

“You’re looking for Bill, aren’t you? Well, like what I said, I don’t know where he is, not a clue. It’s been eleven months since he left my body. It was a weird feeling, being shoved back in my physical form. You see, while he was possessing me, I was, I think, a soul or a ghost. When he left, he put me back.” Jehan looked down at his hands. Dipper couldn’t help staring at his thick, sooty lashes.

“Immediately, I felt something terrible. There was a sharp pain in my right side.” He pointed to it, his finger sinking into the cloth of his hospital gown. “Before I knew it, I was tasting blood in my mouth. I touched my side and there was blood there, too. Have you ever seen a hand completely printed with blood? I lost control of my legs and slumped on the floor of my apartment. I screamed for help. Luckily, the neighbor from two doors down heard me and rushed me to this hospital. It turns out I’ve been stabbed in the liver, but it didn’t look recent. The injury was ‘preserved’ for two or three months, for some reason. It only popped later on.”

Dipper nods, still puzzled. If Jehan’s body had been sustaining injury, wouldn’t he have noticed? He’s seen Bill without clothes. He had never noticed a stitch.

“It led me to believe that Bill stabbed me in the liver, I think, to keep me out of the body while he possessed it, like his own messed up insurance policy. Maybe his power as a demon kept injuries under control. Next month, it’ll be a year since he left. I’ve been to regular trips to the hospital for check-ups since. I can’t afford a transplant.”

“That’s why you’re here,” Dipper realizes. “Apologies.”

“Not your fault,” Jehan assures. “But you, however. Why were you here yesterday?”

“I was with my great uncle to collect documents from my old doctor here,” he explains. “I…I overdosed on pills, was rushed here. Announced in vegetative state.”

“Oh dear,” Jehan softly gasps. His face was written with worry. “I’m very sorry.”

“Like what you said, it’s not your fault.”

“When did you awake?”

“About two weeks ago, I think. I was transferred to California soon after my parents went here, now I’m awake. I stay at my great uncle’s, the Mystery Shack, you heard?”

“A lot,” Jehan answers. “I got the number for that place because Bill wrote it on my mirror. With marker. It’s still there.”

Dipper was given a glimpse of that day Bill drew smiley faces at the pads of his fingers, then the turkey. It was probably drawn with the same marker.

“Sorry, man, Bill’s just like that,” Dipper chuckles. “He doesn’t seem to know how to use paper.”

“Believe me, I know. I saw enough of it. Being a spirit means I can float around and follow him on occasion.”

Dipper paled a bit. “You went with Bill?”

“Like what I said, sometimes. A few days in mid-June. I watched you guys work in the cashier. It was, um, well,” Jehan cupped his chin. “Confusing.”

“How was it confusing?”

“I always didn’t know if you hate each other or what,” he laughs. “Are you fighting? Making a pass at each other? Goodness,” he slumped back with a silly smile, “I was there when you had that argument about Revelations. Thank you, by the way. I can’t tell if you were flirting or bickering, you seemed to be doing both. Don’t get me started on Bill’s jokes. ‘If I were to choose between a bucket of deer teeth and you, I’d choose you.’ Really.”

While Jehan’s words were supposed to be said fervently, his tone remained soft-spoken, only with a hint of cheerfulness.

“Yup,” Dipper laughs along. “Hey, it got better in the end.”

“Seriously, you two developed into the sappiest relationship I’ve ever seen. Holding hands while watching the sky turn purple? Thank God I looked away whenever he tried to kiss you. There were too many to count. I watched that for about a week until I couldn’t take the sap. I’d rather float through walls.”

 _Thank God you even looked away,_ Dipper thought. That meant he didn’t know. Should he even know? Should he tell him? Dipper felt unexpectedly awkward, yet Jehan seemed to be in a comfortable zone of knowledge. Dipper felt like taking a deep breath. Does that even count as intercourse with him? He should read up about it.

“Good,” he mutters instead.

“Thankfully, he doesn’t talk about you often. He’s always sleeping. He muttered something about mindscapes but I didn’t understand. Sometime into August, I noticed he was in some sort of distress, like he was hurrying up, trying to avoid a certain event. One night he left with a coat.” His tone was solemn. Jehan looked upon him. “The very next day, he left my body.”

The atmosphere plunged back into thickness. Dipper tried to seem at ease, but the smile he wore only gave him away. Realities shine with a darkness everyone hates to see. “I didn’t mean to make him go,” he mumbled. “I made a mistake, Jehan.”

“Dipper, everyone does.”

The very fact that he called him by his name and not Pine Tree, like Bill did, was a testimony that spoke for itself.

“Hey, tell you what,” Jehan says, “I’ll be discharged this evening after my doctor speaks to me. If you need to be back at your working place, I’d still be here until seven.”

“D’you have a ride home?”

“Well, not really – “

“I’ll drive you home, if that’s okay?”

“It’s not a bother?”

“Definitely not, dude.”

Jehan gave him a warm smile. No matter what, Jehan exuberated grace. It was a bit blinding.

“Let me give you my number, text me when you’re on your way.” Jehan asks. Dipper fished out his phone from his pocket, handing it to Jehan. The young man typed a bit slowly, like he wasn’t used to a touchscreen phone. Dipper saved him under a simple ‘Jehan’.

There was a tiny flutter in chest. _I got a cute guy’s number._ Fuck. He was glad it faded as quickly as it came.

He glanced at his wristwatch. It’s past three. Stan was probably looking for him already.

“I’ll see you at around seven, okay?” Jehan quietly says. Dipper nods.

“Okay.”

“It was nice meeting you, Dipper.”

“You too, man.”

Jehan smiled at him.

Dipper left the hospital knowing that, somehow in this circumstance, he’s made a new friend.

 

 

Dipper was already driving to the hospital when Jehan texts that he’s waiting near the entrance.

Jehan had one backpack. He walked up to the car wearing a colorless threadbare jacket over a shirt with tacky printing on it. His brown pants were too long on him and he had folded them over his ankles. He was wearing old boat shoes.

“Hello,” he greeted Dipper when he stepped into the passenger’s seat. “Thank you again for offering the ride. Should I give directions?”

“That’ll be nice,” Dipper nodded. He had forgotten the way to the vessel’s apartment, even if to him, it was just a month ago.

The ride was silent. Dipper saw that Jehan was tired. The young man yawned frequently. At one point, driving along a bumpy, uncemented road, Dipper looked off to the passenger’s side to see that Jehan had fallen asleep, his blond head of curls splaying against the headrest. His sleeping face was very peaceful, serene.

The doctor must have put him on drowsy painkillers. Dipper drove slower and avoided the holes in the road as much as possible.

Jehan only awoke when they were on smooth pavement again. Dipper had collected memory of the path to Jehan’s apartment and they were approaching the driveway. He stopped in front of the orange streetlamp. The déjà vu that stabbed at him made him feel stiff – however he looked at it, Jehan did not resemble Bill, and seeing his sleepy face bathed under the streetlamp as Bill corroded Jehan’s sanctity. Dipper shook his head.

“Here?” Dipper asked, just to be sure.

“Yeah, here,” Jehan said. He fitted his backpack over his shoulder. “Hey, um, tomorrow’s Sunday.”

“And?”

Jehan blinked, indecisive. He lingered his eyes over the boy before sighing. “I-I’ll…I’ll just call you, I have your number from the text. Thank you for the ride. Goodbye.”

“Always welcome. Take care of yourself.”

He watched him leave, blond hair washed under orange light.

 

 

It was a breezy Sunday morning in the gift shop when Dipper’s phone rings from the counter. He finishes up with lining up the messed items on the shelf before seeing who it was. Seeing the name, he immediately rushed to answer it.

“Hello, Jehan? What’s up?” Maybe Jehan forgot something in the car. Dipper was already thinking of grabbing the keys from his pocket.

“H-Hey,” his voice filtering through sounded nervous,” I was thinking…um, if-if m-maybe you’re not busy now, w-would you like to go to church?”

Huh. It was an underlying question why Jehan sounded anxious. “I’m neither Catholic nor Christian, man. I’m not even religious.”

“Ah, well, d-do you believe in God?”

Dipper snorts. “Of course.”

“Then you’re welcome to His house, Dipper. It’ll be n- nice for you to experience a Catholic mass; I see you’ve got a lot on y-your plate right now.”

“If you insist, dude. What time?”

“Ah, a-around ten this morning.”

It was past nine thirty. “Okay, I’ll be there at your apartment.”

“Oh–um, is it – will it be fine with you?”

“Definitely, dude. I’ll just get dressed.”

He heard Jehan sigh. “You’re t-too kind, Dipper.”

Woah. The man never ceases to amaze him. “Just helpin’. See you.”

Somehow, Dipper made an effort to look presentable, wearing the best from what he had packed with him. He even did a little with his hair, pushing it back. His mother had asked him to have a haircut while they were still in California; his hair had grown below his ears. Now, while his hair was a bit sloppy in the middle, it was shorter, neater.

He felt like he was off to judgement day, meeting the divine creator or some shit. He had to look nice.

When Dipper went down the steps, Stan saw him coming down from the kitchen. “Woah, kid, what’s with the clothes?” The senior called, “And – God, did you fix your hair?”

“Exactly, I’m gonna see God,” Dipper replied, “y’know, to repent for all my nasty sins.”

“Are you joking,” Stan laughed.

“I really wasn’t,” he said with the most dramatic flair of sarcasm he was capable of. Stan cackled.

“Goin’ to church, huh?”

“Yup. I’ll be back before lunch.”

“Alright. You pray for those sins, boy.” Dipper didn’t want to think if that was sarcastic or not.

When Dipper picks Jehan up, the young man is dressed conservatively, albeit a little weird. Bill would have given him an earful. Jehan wore a murky tweed sweater of browns and greens and purples, daintily buttoned mid-abdomen over a faded polo. His jeans were something you’d see at the bottom pile of the sale section; loose and creased, of a dark indigo shade, with crooked patchwork of moons and hearts at random areas. His shoes weren’t exactly hideous; Dipper guessed it was the only decent pair of leather shoes Jehan had, however, they looked a little off on him.

All in all, Jehan dressed badly. However, it didn’t make him ugly. He was a very handsome person; he just looked…odd.

“You’re here early. You look well.” Jehan smiles.

“Thanks. Yeah, figured if I steer into the wrong direction, we’ll still get there on time.”

Jehan’s presence doesn’t make the quiet ride awkward. There was an aura of comfort about him, opposite from Bill’s wildfire presence. He was hard not to look at; Jehan had a poutish bottom lip, a deep yet soft jawline and thick, dark eyelashes. He frequently cast his eyes down and lowered his head if he wasn’t speaking, which pronounced the shadow of his eyes underneath his brows. He radiated sweetness mingled with a whiff of ignorance. He did not seem to have a full grasp at how handsome he was; in trying to understand it, he became blind to it. Something about him was ambiguously lovely. He was a darling to watch while he blinked. In the small directions Jehan uttered during the ride, he spoke very gently, quiet to the point that Dipper developed a tic of leaning closer whenever he spoke. Listening to him speak was a bit lulling.

Whatever Dipper thought, he could not think of Jehan below reverence. He was pure; the kind of pure that comes with another’s perversion. He felt that finding attraction towards him was like wanting to fuck the Virgin Mary. The thought was abhorrent. Know that the angel is beautiful, but never pluck it from the clouds.

These ideas continued to flutter as they got to the church building. It was relatively small, being that Gravity Falls wasn’t exactly home to many religious citizens. From the windows, it could be seen that the church was not filled to the hilt. At the doors, the priest and choir boys were lining up for the processional march. Jehan tugged him to the side and wandered to the front rows, which were empty. They went into a pew in the middle of an old lady and a middle-aged man wearing a fedora. Dipper insisted that Jehan sit beside the old lady.

The church was spellbinding to him. While he was not new to religion, he had never experienced a Christian setting of mass first-hand. They all stood up when the presider’s cool voice echoed through the church, and Dipper craned his neck to watch the altar boys with candles and mass servers march the aisle. The choir by their side sung in heavenly tunes of welcome and praise. There was a heady smell of incense as the march approached the altar.

The priest was in green robes, his wrinkled hands put together. Dipper missed a second at bowing. The servers in white cleared to the side, and the choir reached their last note.

“May the Lord be with you,” said the priest.

There was a collective "And also with you."

Then the priest made everyone plead that they have sinned. A sad song played; _Lord, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy._

More speaking, then they were allowed to sit. A speaker took the grand podium by the left. First reading, they said. Some letter from St. Paul.

Intriguing.

Dipper sat through the mass with less boredom than he had foreseen. The songs, the verses, the responses were all at some level, divine. He did not participate, mostly because he didn’t know how to go about it, but he made it for it with intense fascination.

The priest was now in his homily. It was the only time Jehan looked up.

After which, a basket was passed. Jehan began to dig into his jacket, like the rest of the crowd. Dipper patted his pocket and remembered the dollar he had there. He slipped it out just in time when the middle-aged man handed him the basket.

Jehan tucked a five-note in.

Before the Our Father, Jehan told Dipper he didn’t need to hold hands because he wasn’t Catholic. He was fine with it, the obligation of the non-believer to stay in their lane. That was, until the prayer began and Dipper realized – the forty-something man beside him made an oh-so casual move to take Jehan’s hand, leering at the blond.

Right in front of him, he watched Jehan try to smile at the man, even holding his hand back, but the underlying discomfort was clear. Dipper was suddenly furious. His hands were balled to fists until the song was over. When Jehan was pulling away, the older man’s hold lingered. Dipper took Jehan’s wrist and set it between him and Jehan’s side, letting go immediately. Dipper sent the man a burning side-glare.

He would’ve mouthed _fuck you_ if they weren’t in church.

At communion, Jehan hurried to take it before anyone else in their lane, coming back before the middle-aged man could follow him to the communion line.

The mass was soon over. Thankfully, the middle-aged man left before the priest even descended from the platform. He heard Jehan sigh.

The priest, mass servers and altar boys went back to the aisle and left as they have come.

“You alright?” Dipper asked once people started filtering out.

“I-It’s not the f-first time. I mean, i-it’s not the same man, but yeah.”

“Seriously, what the hell, in _church_. With a damn priest in the altar. During the friggin’ communion song.”

“I just brush it off,” he murmured, “I’m alright.”

Dipper bit his lip. Just how many times had this happened that made Jehan numb to it? He felt sick.

“C-Can we just go home?”

“Yeah, sure,” Dipper stood. In the background, people were praying at the statues of the Virgin Mary and some saints. The choir was putting back their chairs. “Let’s get outta here.”

Because he didn’t have a chance to when they entered, Jehan knelt on one knee at the aisle before they exited the church.

Dipper did not ask more questions about Jehan’s predicament. He felt like he would be trespassing Jehan’s will if he did.

But because of this, he then never realized why Jehan was so tolerant to being rubbernecked; he was, after all, a fucking stripper. You couldn’t get leered at enough by any other job. How could he have forgotten that! Jehan looked the farthest from such occupation. It would’ve been unimaginable to him, now that Bill had left and taken any sort of promiscuity away from the vessel. All this charm, this tenderness, this innocence that bordered onto immaculacy and all of it was bared onto the sick face of lust!

And to think Jehan still went to church. It’s as if it didn’t matter, as long as he was able to experience his faith. What a saint beyond his time. Heaven would weep.

They arrived to the driveway of the apartment. Jehan, however, did not leave just yet.

“Hey, Dipper?”

Even his voice sounded like that of a child. “Yeah?”

“Would you mind coming up to my room?”

 “Why, man?”

“If you remember, Bill – he, uh, left some of his stuff. I’ve collected them in a box. I’d bring it down here myself, but it’s too heavy. Would you mind giving me a hand?”

Dipper thought himself narrow. How could he have let that slip? Bill lived in the guy’s apartment. Hell, he kept his clothing there. He was suddenly filled with a joyful hope, knowing that there were things still left of Bill.

“Of course, dude.”

They went up the steps together. Third floor, first room to the left. The building itself looked as shabby as it did from the outside.

“I’m sorry for the mess,” Jehan said, opening the door. His apartment, at first glance, was everything but a mess, yet this was probably because there wasn’t much in it. It was half the size of the gift shop; the bigger area was bedroom and living room and the smaller space was the kitchen and a door, clearly to the bathroom. He was immediately hit with the smell of olden wood and vanilla. There was one window; only above Jehan’s tidy bed. Above the window was a crucifix.

He could see jam and jelly jars from the glass of the kitchen cabinet. On the counter was, surprisingly, a vase with a fresh bundle of roses. It was given, judging from the slip of folded paper tied to one rose.

There was a tiny desk wedged beside a closet. A small space separated these and the edge of the bed. There were pegs above the bed’s wall, which hung with some of Jehan’s clothing, while near the corner was taped a list, and if Dipper had looked, they were titles of heavy, quick-tempo songs.

There were no pictures. On the desk were many cassette tapes piled alphabetically. Beside the pile was an old perfume box, looking like it was frequently opened. That was probably what Dipper had been smelling on Bill. There was a small statue of the Virgin Mary beside a see-through purse that contained make-up. When Dipper glanced at Jehan, he didn’t seem to be wearing any. The mirror above the desk had the Mystery Shack's number scribbled on its side.

Nothing fancy, nothing vain. Jehan’s apartment was a display of worn things and denial. Even an open Bible lay beside his pillow. He had expected more glamorous things, but he never really knows Jehan, does he?

Jehan starts to push out a box from underneath his bed. “I folded all his stuff in here. The shoes are in their boxes,” he slipped the big box out and at Dipper. On the side was written _Bill Cipher._ Packing tape sealed it. “I placed everything I could find.”

Dipper got down to brush his fingers over the name. Dust collected on his fingertips. It was so much harder to believe it has been eleven months. The name was probably written with the same marker.

“Thank you.” He looked up at him, and he saw the difference between the archangel and the cherubim.

“Should I help you bring it down?”

“No, I got this.” He took the box by its sides and lifted, and the lift that weighted down on his hands mocked him. Here is the presence of the life that he left, shadowing memories of laughs and touches and voices in the dark all boiled down into the last and final box. “I’ll take this down now.”

“Alright then, thank you for going to church with me.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Take care of yourself, Dipper.”

Dipper gave him a sad smile before leaving the apartment.

 

 

The whole ride back to the shack was just a cruel play on how long Dipper could hold himself back without breaking. He closed the attic door behind him and took the butterfly knife from underneath his mattress, the same one he had ripped the carpet with, and tore open the packing tape.

Laid there in the box was everything, all of Bill’s clothes, the same voguish, glamorous sheen of fabrics he himself had accompanied Bill to buying. The gold blazer, his silkish dress shirts, all his bowties wrapped in the lace handkerchief he used to sop up the holy water all those months before. But Dipper dug deeper, pushing away all those clothes until he found what he was looking for; the black coat Bill had worn the night they set the town on fire.

As he saw it, he was stabbed through his chest. His hands shook, grasping the thick coat from the bottom and lifting it out, hugging it, burying his nose into the collar. The warmth of black fleece was against his cheek, and if he breathed hard enough, he could smell the hint of gasoline.

Damn it all that he did not feel arms wrapping back around him, damn it all that he’ll never hear that nickname, _Pine Tree,_ said so dearly into his ear. He brought the coat with him as he lay in bed, curling up as he sobbed quietly, holding the coat against his body.

He did not love Bill for the beauty of his face. He loved him because of the fire he burnt that beauty with, the very same fire that burnt his heart, _their_ hearts.

But now his chest only felt cold.

“Are you still out there?” He whimpered into the coat’s collar. “Can you hear me?”

Silence was all that mumbled back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So maybe I lied, there are some feels.
> 
> Jehan is based from a combination of many characters from different fandoms and real people. My idea for him then was "a morality-inducing bishonen from every single fandom I've trampled upon." He is primarily based off a Les Miserables character from the Les Amis, where I also got the nickname we refer him with; Jean "Jehan" Prouvaire. He's a cinnamon roll. The other character I based him from is Enjolras, mostly for physical aspects. Victor Hugo (the author of Les Mis) describes Enjolras as "angelically beautiful" and usually goes off describing how pretty he is and how he looks like a young lady, it's amazing.
> 
> In my quest to find Jehan an actual human reference (being that the portrayals of Enjolras both in film and theater do not match the one in the book, something I'm disappointed with), he has absorbed the physical aesthetic of model Valter Torsleff. His personality and attitude is based from that of a real person from my school who we're gonna call Aubrey.
> 
> If you want an imprecise representation of him as a whole, refer to Ayase Yukiya from the manga _Okane Ga Nai._ Warning; he is explicitly sexualized, which isn't truly Jehan at all. For me, Jehan's beauty is purely aesthetical.
> 
> Two chapters left, darlings. I'll be posting one more for this year and the last chapter will be uploaded on January. Jehan's contribution to the plot is not yet over. I hope you enjoyed reading through him in this chapter! [Merry Christmas!](http://even-stars-disappear.tumblr.com/)


	13. Flesh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel: according to this time it shall be said of Jacob and Israel, what hath God wrought!_  
>     
> (Numbers 23:23)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: As for the reception of last chapter, I’m very glad that the new character was so well received! This makes things a whole lot easier; I hope that in your perceptions, the characters of Bill and Jehan are separate, regardless of physical form.
> 
> Heads up, thank you so much to levy120 yet again for making this wonderful [AMV](http://levy120.tumblr.com/post/135983236808/spoilers-obviously-or-well-kinda-im-not-really) dedicated to Howl! It uses clips from Gravity Falls itself, so Dipper is 12 there, but nevertheless it’s still amazing and feels just as real. Levy, you didn’t let this fic down, thank you!
> 
> For the holiday that passed, I'd like to thank all my friends on Tumblr for their love and support. Reshii, Jayden, Levy, I'm looking at you, you adorable nerds. Jayden is helping boost up some publicity on this fic! One of his friends, Harley, actually came up with some pretty neat [fanart](http://ghost-noises.tumblr.com/post/136214149957/we-were-here-some-fanart-for-rich-people-water)! Thank you all, you made this holiday so much better. ♥♥♥
> 
> Things are closing in quick. This chapter will pull some ropes and throw some keys into the ocean. Keep yourselves sharp. This is about 8k words long. Please read this at a steady pace, and maybe things won’t hit you too hard.

**Chapter 13**

Dipper fought open the cold ice cream freezer and squinted through the white fog. He braced his fingers for the chill, surged out a big tub of chocolate chip ice cream and dumped it in his basket.

He was at a convenience store in the bleak parts of town, sent by Grunkle Stan to buy ice cream for the Ducktective reruns that will be aired that Tuesday night. It was well into nine o’clock and the mall had closed, so Dipper drove around town to find a convenience store that was still open.

He paid for the ice cream and awkwardly stood at the counter as the cashier, a tall girl with voluminous hair, carefully wrapped the tub in brown paper. Dipper shifted his eyes to the street outside, the skyline above an inky blackness with gray clouds. The weather had not been so good since that morning. There were small pinpricks of dried raindrops on the glass panes.

A slight fellow walked into the picture, wearing a thick brown coat, the collar of it made of worn fur. His blond head was bowed, keeping his step in the sidewalk.

From afar, Dipper recognized him with a fluttery buzz in his gut. Quickly, he thanked the cashier, who smiled back at him and handed him the plastic bag which contained his ice cream tub. While making his way out of the convenience store, it began to softly drizzle outside. He disdainfully watched the glass door patter with raindrops before pushing the door and heading out.

“Jehan!” He called against the drizzle, and he felt a few drops touch his tongue. The young man whipped his head up with an initial expression of alarm, brows high and his shoulders hiked up, until he identified who had just called his name. Seeing that it was Dipper, jogging toward him with a weighed-down plastic bag, he visibly relaxed. However, there was still hesitation in his careful eye, as if he didn’t think it fit that Dipper see him at this particular situation.

“Dipper, hello.” His friendly voice was not louder than the drizzle. Jehan has his hands shoved in his pockets while avoiding Dipper's eye. “What are you doing out late?”

“My great uncle sent me to buy ice cream, he wants to marathon this show. I happened to see you from inside the convenience store.” After a pause, he added, “Where are you headed, man?”

Jehan bit his lip. “I’m going to work,” he shyly mumbled.

It took a handful of moments for Dipper to understand. The memory crept back with a slow burn, a horror he had not foreseen to always have been there; suddenly he realized that this gentle wisp of delicateness, this beautiful heart, also crawled through the broken shards and needles of lechery, and so deep did they pierce that the black and bleeding wound is only in the soul, hidden from the earth, hidden from the eye.

Jehan lowered his head. It was hanging silently in the air, _I didn’t want you to see it this way._

Dipper swallowed, quickly thinking to relieve Jehan’s unease. “It’s…it’s looking like it’ll rain hard,” Dipper said as casually as he could, keeping the pity off his voice. “Do you want to hitch a ride?”

At that moment, the drizzle picked up. “O-Okay,” Jehan answered, “I’d w-walk under the rain m-myself but – ”

Dipper chuckled. “Dude, don’t be silly, you’ll probably be blown away before you reach the end of the street.” He spoke no more, just giving Jehan a beckoning nod to his car. The two figures surged against the rain, that hopeful little jog of escaping the sordid. Once inside, Jehan slipped off his coat, continuously muttering apologies at the rain that had collected on it. Dipper assured him it was alright and took Jehan’s coat, putting it in the backseat along with his own jacket and the ice cream tub.

“I-I’m so sorry I ruined the mat – “

“It’s fine, a little rain doesn’t hurt.”

Jehan looked at him with gratitude he felt only saints were capable of. “Thank you, Dipper.”

“Don’t mention it,” Dipper said, backing out of his parking. Once on the street and driving back to the main road, he said to Jehan, “You’ll have to give me directions, the only time I got near your workplace was when Bill used a Latin spell to diffuse my molecules so,” Dipper shrugged. Jehan let out a small laugh.

“Alright, turn left into that road.”

Of course, there was that stubborn thumb of fascination that stuck out along with the pity. Disparities are what make people interesting. There is always that spitting spark that comes from the dazzling forlorn that awes us. It was odd, that the wild and bright show’s players could not pay their rent, that the jewelry that shone were nothing but rhinestones. Something about it was admirable. Reposed sadness is always quite fascinating when it’s covered in glitter.

The rain still had not stopped, even when Dipper pulled up near the club’s back entrance, passing by the trucks and sleek cars. It was pouring, making the neon sign of the club blur against the windshield.

Dipper collected Jehan’s coat, still wet from the rain, and handed it to him. “You’re not late?”

“Just in time,” Jehan reassured. “It’s like this; they let the girls take the stage first. Whoever wants a lady can see one then they leave. I’m the, ah, the only male one here. There were some cases of trouble. My boss – I mean, Keisha decided to save me for last so the ‘bad eggs’ are gone by the time I’m on the stage.”

The way that name, Keisha, left Jehan’s tongue, had a hint of relief. Dipper unconsciously found himself smiling.

Jehan pulled on his coat. “Thank you so much for the ride, Dipper. In this weather I would’ve called Colby but he’s out of town, his grandmother is turning ninety.” He then added as an afterthought, “I might’ve gotten sick, I can’t ruin my voice, it’s three days away, you see.”

“Glad to help, don’t mention it.”

Jehan lifted the fur hood over his head. “Goodbye.”

“Be safe,” he replied. Jehan smiled as he slipped out the car and ran against the rain to the backdoor.

 

 

Wednesday came and still the weather stayed gloomy. It was raining heavily when he woke up, and it continued to rain well into the afternoon. All day, Dipper heard complaints from Stan about the parking area getting too muddy. Dipper turned up the heater and wore a jacket while sitting behind the counter of the gift shop. There weren’t a lot of patrons; the smart tourists probably stayed in due to the weather. Before noon, a disgruntled family of five, all wearing raincoats and their boots caked with mud, came in and just about emptied the vending machine. The mother was muttering under her breath, the three kids ranging between ages two and nine were complaining about wet socks, and the father ended up audibly swearing. When they left, the parents arguing in mumbles; _I told you we should’ve stayed in the motel_ , Dipper finally had something to do; he mopped up mud from the floor.

It’s a silent three o’clock when Dipper’s phone rings from his pocket. His eyes left the spot on the wall he was staring at and fished out his phone. Someone was calling; it was Jehan.

He cleared his throat before answering. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Dipper,” came Jehan’s gentle voice. “Good afternoon, nothing much. I just...I think need some help.”

“What is it?”

“The weather, it’s –“

“Terrible, yup.”

“I have this rehearsal in fifteen minutes, I can’t really go under the rain. Can you – ah, g-give me a ride? I’m s-sorry if I’ve d-disturbed you – “

“No, really, it’s cool. The gift shop isn’t being crowded, I’m not doing anything. I’ll be there soon.”

He heard Jehan sigh, relieved. “Okay. I-I’ll see you. Thank you so much.”

“Alright, see you too.”

Five minutes later, Dipper was driving Stan’s car to Jehan’s apartment. He was already standing under the front door’s little arch, wearing the brown coat with worn fur from yesterday. He ran under the rain until he got to the passenger’s door.

“Hey,” Dipper greeted him, taking Jehan’s dampened coat as it was handed to him and placed it in the backseat.

“Hello, Dipper. Thank you for coming.”

“No problem, dude.”

“I’m really not disturbing you from work?”

Dipper chuckled. “If anything, you actually gave me something to do, so kudos to you, man.”

Jehan beamed in response. It was all Dipper needed for the car ride to be pleasant. The gift shop _was_ really starting to get boring without any customers pouring in as usual. He’d then be listening to Stan’s dinnertime rant about weather being bad for business.

He had been purposely trying to avoid looking through the box of Bill’s clothes. The morning after he had curled up to sleep with the coat, he came to some conclusion and folded it back in the box, putting it in the alcove away from reach so he didn’t have to think about it. Some internal autopilot that learned from four years of depression was telling him he shouldn’t sink too deep in it. He had brushed into his soul the only things left of someone he adored, and he had overwhelmed himself. The longing became sin, the grief became greed, and he had to have it away or else it would devastate him.

He put his mind to other thoughts. He filled his head with a strain for logical safety, yet all he wanted was to hurl himself to the otherwise.

 _Don’t think about it_ , he’d tell himself when thoughts of Bill crossed his mind. _Don’t think about it._

Dipper drove slowly at Jehan’s request. He thought the windshield wipers swabbing at the rain relaxing, along with Jehan’s presence beside him.

“Dipper,” Jehan spoke halfway through the ride. He was twiddling at the end of his murky green sweater, three sizes too big.

“Yes?”

“I’ve always wondered,” he began, “why did Bill ever need a vessel?” Kind eyes looked over at him. “Was there any…ah, big reason why he needed to be in contact with you?”

Shit.

Dipper swallowed. He bit his lip, frowned, and kept his eyes on the road. Somehow, he drove a little faster. Even if he wanted to keep silent, Jehan was the kind of person that you couldn’t simply leave hanging; doing so would be cold.

“I-I…well,” his shoulders fell, finding the right words. “I’d rather not, I’m – “

He saw Jehan’s lips part in a small gasp by the side of his eye. “Oh dear, I’m sorry,” he quickly bowed his head, “That was rude of me, it’s a sensitive t-topic, I see that n-now. I’m very sorry.”

Dipper sighed. “It’s fine. You didn’t know.”

“I’m sorry,” he continued still. “It’s none of my business, I shouldn’t have asked.”

“You don’t need to keep apologizing, I understand.”

The rest of the ride was bathed in awkward, painful silence.

When Dipper pulls up at the backdoor of the club, Jehan makes a grab for his own coat. “Thank you for the ride, Dipper.”

“When it’s still raining by the time your rehearsals are done, you can give me a call or text me.”

Jehan was embarrassed. “I’ve a-already been too much trouble today – “

“I insist, dude.”

“You really are too kind, Dipper.” Jehan said. “I will. Thank you.”

Jehan put on his coat and left the car.

Dipper drove back to the shack with a crumbling resolve.

 

 

He got a text from Jehan at seven. The rain was no longer a hard downpour but a moderate shower. He drove silently to the club, deep in thought.

Jehan climbed in, looking a bit worn. No one said a word during the drive back to his apartment.

“Jehan,” Dipper said as he pulled up on the driveway, calling his attention.

“Yes, Dipper?”

“Can you stay for a moment?”

“Of course. What is it?”

He mentally braced himself. “You asked why Bill need a vessel, right? Why he needed to be in contact with me?”

Jehan went a shade of pink. “I-I told you, it w-was rude of me to ask."

“It’s not,” Dipper held. “Now that I've thought of it, it’s really not.”

Jehan stared at him.

“You should know. You have the right to know. You’re part of this whole mess from the moment Bill made you his vessel, and I’m sorry that I didn’t see this at first. Whatever had been the root of Bill possessing you is your business, too. Hell, you have a stab in your liver because of all this.” He put his head against the rest, staring down at the wheel. “I’ve been so preoccupied with my own hitches that I forgot that you also have yours. I’m sorry for that.”

Jehan's face softened. "It's okay, Dipper."

The rain kept pelting hard against the window shield, and suddenly, the car had dropped into colder temperatures. Jehan nodded and faced him.

Dipper took a deep breath. For a moment, he thought of the last time he had to say this again to someone. “I had a twin sister.” He paused, breathing hard, and when he spoke again his voice began to break. “She died when we were fifteen, in a bus accident. It killed thirty people, and she was one of them.”

Jehan had put a hand over his mouth in a quiet gasp; it was not surprise; it was affliction. There are moments when we did not know someone, have not seen their face or their deeds, but we feel from who have loved them that they have been nothing but grace; heaven whispers the name of its blood.

“She meant a lot to me, to everyone. Mabel was the best sister, the best person I knew. She died so early, it's unfair - she had her life ahead of her and she was just...taken away."

Dipper felt so numb from this sudden revelation that he did not cry. He just stared off, eyes heavy and mouth quivering.

"I sunk into severe depression for four years. I was sixteen when they prescribed me Doxepin, an antidepressant that’s only supposed to be used by adults.I kept seeing my sister’s dead body, her actual corpse from when they got her out of the river. I couldn't tell if they were real or just nightmares. It just made my situation worse. 

“A year ago, Bill visited me. He said he needed me for his plans, but my soul was all bent and he needed it in good condition. So he had an intention to give me ‘happiness’ – whatever his definition of it was. I personally didn’t care, but things happened. I was a bit of an idiot, really. He tried. He showed me the skeleton of a pet pig when I wondered where it had gone. He brought me to the club where you worked and almost got me carted off by a convict. I was angry at him, frustrated. The pet pig was just downright terrifying, and what happened in the club – I had enough of him. I told him to go screw himself.

“I didn’t listen to him try to explain, y’know, until he said why he wanted to bring me there. I thought he was going to take off his clothes – sorry. Turns out he just wanted to sing for me.”

“Disco Girl by BABBA?”

Dipper ogled at him. “How did you know that?”

“Bill sang that. All the time, over and over.”

The boy sighed. “I liked that song. Cheesy, I know, but Top 40 hits are catchy.”

“Not going to judge you.”

“I felt really bad after telling him off. Even my uncle noticed. He gave me the keys to his car, told me I could drive around if I wanted to clear my head. This is his car, by the way. He told me Lookout Point was a good place. One night I left and went to Lookout Point. Bill was there, surprisingly. I don’t know. I asked him to sing for me. Cecilia, do you know that? It’s my sister’s last favorite song. Soon, he went into my mindscape and fished out a good memory of my sister for me to dream. I barely remembered that memory. It was as if I was never that happy."

"What was the dream?"

Dipper smiled. "Me and my sister in the back of a pick-up truck, going around town, going to sleep under the stars. Funny, I slept under the stars that night without a thought that one day, my sister would be one of them."

He watched the expression on Jehan's face soften.

"Bill and I...we made up after that, we became awkward friends. This is where what you saw in June comes. It grew. It’s not even intentional. It just happened, became like that. I think Bill never saw that us just being together was actually helping. I liked those little moments when it was just the two of us. It was never a full-on romance. I didn’t notice that I was actually starting to develop something until…until the night we set the town on fire, the same night Bill left with the coat.”

A look of realization washed over Jehan. “The fire that doesn’t burn, right? Bill’s fire?”

Dipper nodded. “Yup. He woke me up at one in the morning, came in through the window, and brought me to this compressed van with gallons of gasoline in the back. He said he wanted to have some fun. We doused half the town, got chased down by cops after we doused Nathaniel Northwest’s statue. We got the town burning by the time they lost us. Everything was up in blue fire. He brought me to the water tower, we watched from up there. He then brought me to the community theater.”

Dipper’s tone was playful while he recounted Bill swearing at Macbeth in the community theater house, yet it became solemn when he told him about the dance.

“We danced,” Dipper plainly said, but all the meaning of those two words was there. “I had a thought that maybe…we had something. That I could believe in something again.”

He paused for a long moment before beginning again with the dream. Mabel, the one he thought was his sister, begging him to leave Bill. He kept his descriptions short and only told him what things it said that had struck him the most.

Then the nightmare of a day that followed when he woke up. Drinking, ignoring his great uncle, breaking what ‘Mabel’ wanted to Bill. Throwing the bottle, seething in Bill’s face, the five-second reprieve for Stan to go back downstairs or else he’d ‘jump off a chair’. Then the pitiful aftermath where both knew they were weak under the wish of the dead. Bill understood that Dipper would do anything for Mabel, and if that was what Dipper wanted, he would do it.

He told him how Bill cried; _I understand now, why storms are named after people._ How Bill left and his own grave mistake to overdose on Doxepin, the cause of his coma.

His recount of Mabel was hazy. He had forgotten everything but three things; they were in a river cliff, the ‘Mabel’ of his nightmares was nothing but a parasite that fed off his depression, and she asked him to find Bill and apologize.

“And here we are. My sister wants me to find him. I want to find him, he’s – he’s the only thing I’m asking for.” He closed his eyes and bowed his head. “Sometimes, I still wish she never died. I wish I never had to lose her, I wish I never had to take pills. I wish I never had nightmares, thank God they’ve stopped. That I was never depressed, that I didn’t hurt Stan. I wish I never had to drive Bill away because he was the only thing that made it all bearable. But there’s nothing I can do. I’ve pushed him away. Now he’s gone and I don’t know how to bring him back.”

He felt a soft hand reach out and hold his wrist. He looked up, and Jehan’s gentle face showed him sympathy. It wasn’t the kind that made Dipper feel small; instead, it made him feel that his grief was valid.

“I’m sorry,” Jehan whispered. “For your sister, for Bill, for everything.”

Dipper blinked away his tears, wiping them with the back of his hand. His voice shook when he mumbled, “I just want him back, Jehan. I just want him back.”

 

 

Two days pass. Dipper and Jehan’s paths do not meet. Dipper went about his usual business in the shack. After he had revealed to Jehan everything, saying his story out loud, he realized the gravity of it. He missed Bill more than ever, and was preoccupied with the box of his belongings upstairs. Looking through what had been Bill’s embodiment, there was an ache in his heart that was both longing and frustration. It was fatal to him.

In those two days that passed, he thought of nothing else but Bill. Every night was an image of that one where he laid in bed awake, thinking of the car keys on his desk and the drive to Lookout Point. Only he knew there would be no one there. Over and over, he tried all the summoning rituals he knew, both metaphysical summoning and physical, but all attempts failed.

His thoughts whirled. Like reflex, he was always steering into blaming himself. If only they had the chance to love each other longer. If only he hadn’t thought that the parasite was his sister. If only he didn’t throw the vodka bottle. If only he didn’t ask him to leave.

But these thoughts were always dampened. Mabel’s voice came like a soft tinkling bell, reminding him that nothing was his fault, that none of these were rooted from him. And if there was anything he believed a greater length, it was his sister.

Yet Mabel’s voice only removed guilt. It never mended sorrow. It was there, a dull pulse, yearning, sinking, at times brutal. Dipper slept on a Friday night with little resolution.

He slept only a little over three hours when he’s forced awake by a loud racket from underneath his pillow. His phone was obnoxiously clamoring into his sleepy ears, the vibration a roaring thrum against his head. Annoyed, he reached to see who the hell was calling him in this hour, squinting at the too-bright screen that was blinding him.

He took some time to process the name flashed on screen. Jehan.

The lights in his brain suddenly switched on. Still swerving out of sleep, Dipper answered the frantic call.

There was a scared voice saying his name while distant, frisky music pumped in the background. “Dipper? Dipper, h-hello?”

“Jehan, hey,” he croaked back, rubbing at his eyes with the heel of his other hand. “It-It’s early.”

Outside, the heavy rain pelted against the shack. The weather had been constantly showering for the past few days. It was a thunderstorm, with rain like lightbulbs shattering on the roof.

“Dipper? Hello –“ There was a rustle of signal, “Hello? Are you – are you awake, Dipper?”

“Y-Yeah, now that you woke me up.”

“Oh d-dear, I’m very, very sorry to disturb you – “

Dipper mumbled through sleep. “Trust me, you’re not the first,” he took his phone up to check the time. It was two in the morning. He nuzzled it back in his ear. “Jehan, why are you calling? What’s wrong?”

There was a sound like a whimper. “Dipper, I-I don’t feel safe,” the static muffled, “I d-don’t feel s-safe, please, c-can you pick m-me up? Where I w-work?”

The very tone of those words were enough to shatter Dipper awake. He sat up, making the blankets pool around his lap. “Yeah, yeah sure. Just – just hold on a bit, okay? Stay calm, Jehan.”

“I-I will. P-Please hurry, Dipper.”

He was already up, putting on a decent pair of pants over his boxers. “Just sit tight, man. I’ll be there soon.”

“Okay, thank you.” The call ended.

He slipped into the blue waterproof turtleneck he had worn on the night he drove to Lookout Point. Dipper crept out of the shack in a light sprint, keys in his pocket. Stan wasn’t sleeping in the yellow couch, an odd emptiness for a Friday night. Usually a bowl of chips would be at his knee, plus the television would be streaming outdated infomercials. Stan often forgot they were outdated. He remembered Stan once calling the number to a girdle franchise and finding out the number was dead. Dipper crept by the living room as if Stan’s sleeping form was really there.

Putting up the hood over his head, he ran across the wet lawn and got into the car. The sound of rain drowns out the engine’s gurgle. He drove straight into town, turning into its outskirts and steering into the direction of the club. There was no excited thrill of leaving deep into the night with the rain washing down the streets. Instead, he held in his heart anxiety, fearing what may have been the cause of Jehan being scared enough to have Dipper come get him.

Upon pulling up in front of the club’s backdoor, Dipper sent Jehan a quick text.

_2: 16 AM_

_I’m out in the back, you can go out now._

Seconds later, the door pushed with an umbrella. It opened, and a tall form emerged underneath it. All was blurry; the rain kept Dipper from seeing anything in detail as the young man in that familiar brown coat jogged against the rain and to the car.

When the door opened, Dipper knew it was Jehan, but he did not recognize him.

He was in full on make-up, eyes heavy and dark, while his cheeks where dusted pink. His lips were a deep shade of rogue. His blond hair was ran back, all messed curls and hairspray, and it looked like there were traces of glitter in it. His slender neck was laced with a choker, snug against his Adam’s apple. Inside the coat he wore a suit jacket made of fine silk material, unbuttoned with nothing underneath it, revealing suppled skin. His svelte form was completely bare. He looked like a whore just begging to be fucked.

Dipper found himself drawing a breath, alarmed and unexpectedly irritated that Jehan was displayed in this manner, and tore away his eyes.

As Jehan stepped in, closing the umbrella, if Dipper were looking, he would have seen Jehan’s feet were in daring black heels. Instead, Dipper stared directly in front of him, pursing his lips as the young man got into the car. Nothing about Jehan’s appearance incited lust. Just…anger. Fear, above anything, that Jehan was presented this way to nameless men, that he was lusted after, that he was the figure in shameless fantasies. Dipper couldn’t stomach it. He barely made it through socking the middle-aged asshole from church in his face. If he hadn’t known Jehan in the least, it still might have been bearable.

But Jehan was his friend. They had gone to church. Jehan trusted him enough to call him at two in the morning.

He met Jehan’s eye a second time, compassion the only thing allowing him to maintain eye contact. He could see that Jehan was trying his best to keep himself collected. There was great timidity in how he held himself, pulling on his coat so it covered his bare torso, bowed his head, curled into himself. He could see the cuff of the coat going past his knuckles. Jehan’s trembling fingers were in lace gloves.

Dipper’s eyes flickered to his knees. They were pressed together. He found that Jehan’s legs were in thigh-highs.

Dammit. God fucking dammit.

“Thank g-goodness you c-c-came.” His voice quivered so bad Dipper barely heard him. “I-I escaped t-the show, K-Keisha w-wasn’t around – ” Jehan’s brittle words ended there. His teeth were biting at his tinted lips. The way his face crumpled showed he was keeping in tears.

“Are you alright?” Dipper carefully asked, and as soon as it left his mouth he realized how worthless that question was.

“Now that I-I’m out of th-there, y-yeah.”

The boy’s tone was soothing. “Let’s get you home, okay?”

He heard Jehan sniffle with a timid nod. Dipper drove the hell out of there. He went fast despite the downpour, eager to get Jehan away from that place and away from whatever was in there that terrified him. The young man had gone into a cold mute and the car was in a sensitive silence of beaten pity, which only got worse further into the drive. He felt that asking for the reason why Jehan had called was none of his business and did not speak of it, respecting Jehan to his silence. Even talking seemed sacrilegious, but Dipper didn’t really care for talking; if the only way he could help Jehan was to bring him home, he would do just that.

Once they got to the driveway of Jehan’s apartment, the young man turned to give Dipper the most reserved of smiles, a pained twitch of lips more than anything. He then opened the door, put out a foot, surging his umbrella against the rain and got out, closing the door. He hurriedly walked away, heels sunk in an inch of rain.

 

 

Dipper did not wake up until the sun was at its peak in the sky. He checked his phone, and there was nothing from Jehan. Somehow, he felt that contacting him would be trespassing his recovery space. Instead, he went through his day as usual, his anxiety for the young man constantly hovering in the background. But through the length of the day, he thought less and less about it, and when evening came and Stan ordered pizza for dinner, not once did a thought concerning Jehan cross his mind.

It was well into ten o’clock. Dipper was with Stan in the living room, sharing a bowl of chips while watching an old 60’s musical. Stan was continually singing out broken lyrics, which made Dipper laugh at his great uncle’s oddest attempts at reaching a high note. Stressed shoulders and poop faces were common. Stan’s nose and eyes often crunched so it looked like he was pulling at a really tight wrench.

_Oh sweetheart, would you like to hear a wisecrack? My dear ex-wife wants ten years of her life back._

_How she misses me, pulling on that trigger! Look, there it goes, her aim is getting better!_

The song was skippy, lighthearted. On the black and white screen he watched a good-looking man in his thirties continue to swing at the mike on stage. Other club patrons were in a dance number around him, accompanying his song with lively back-up voices. The only thing that alerts Dipper that his phone was ringing was its vibration against his thigh. He pulls his phone out, Stan still merrily singing along to the musical, and he feels a drop in his gut when the caller ID reads Jehan.

He gets up from the floor and walks out of the living room, answering the phone when he’s on his way upstairs.

“Jehan? Hello?” It all came pouring back now, the last of what Dipper’s seen of him; the wrong make-up on a gentle face, the wrong clothes on someone so innocent. How his words had quivered so bad that Dipper barely understood.

Yet a loud, slurring voice came yelling into his ear. “ _Dipper!_ Dipper, j-just wonder– _urrp-_ wonderf-ful! D-Dipper, m-my man! The _greatest!_ ”

Dipper deadpanned. What the hell? “Jehan? What’s – what’s happened to you?” And a moment later, paling a little himself, “Are you drunk?”

A laugh, full and brimming. “Y-You say that like – like it’s true, or-or…or s-something!” He heard the sound of glass being picked off a table, then a swig and gulps.

Dipper got to the attic and sat down on his bed. The old man’s singing came muffled from downstairs. Jehan in any plight of substance use was unimaginable, like an angel on drugs. Sobriety was part of his name. Hearing his drunken voice stream from the receiver legit scared Dipper. “Do you want me to come over? What’s wrong? How can I help?”

“Oh, n-no dude! Not n-n-necessary! I-I’m fine, I’m fine…j-just…hey, h-hey lis-lis-listen, D-Dipper.”

“I’m listening.”

“Dipper I’m– _urrp_ –I’m really really s-sorry for F-F-Friday night, t-that w-was un…un-uncalled for.”

Even if Jehan couldn’t see, Dipper nodded. “It’s okay, man. You needed help.”

“M-My man…I’ll tell you something – I had…I had to l-leave, b-because,” Jehan took another swig of his alcohol, “I s-saw some people in– _urrp–_ in the crowd, y’know.”

“I hear you.”

“T-Those d-digusting…God-awf-ful…” There was a light bump, maybe Jehan hitting his fist on the table. “I-I didn’t – didn’t think th-they’d be able – able to f-follow m-me, this– _urrp–_ town is practically off the d-damn map.”

Jehan didn’t skip a breath, talking quick. “It’s – it’s because…it’s been two years since I got here after –“ Jehan was silent. He could see him staring at the alcohol in his glass. “I-I had…debts…debts, D-Dipper. Real – real bad debts. Th-they’re just—just one of ‘em b-but – they’re the _worst_.” Jehan had channeled so much anger in that one word that he heard a rasp in it, like a singer hitting a growl. “I c-couldn’t pay them, he wanted – “ Swallow, swallow. Bang of a glass. Dipper heard a sob.

 “S-So I ran, far far away…the furthest I can get...away from D-Denver…ended up here.”

Jehan was drinking again, long and hard gulps. It was painful to listen to. Then there was a feeble laugh. “I-I’ll tell you…t-the first – first time I ran, my f-father said he had no s-son that was gay…” His bitter words were slurring, slipping. “Pushed m-me outta the house. M-My mother did the same…I w-wanted to at least… _at least_ …s-say g-goodbye.”

Dipper squinted. Goodbye to whom?

 “She was five then, now she’s eleven. She barely reached my hip, she was that small. She l-liked…d-dancing to old s-songs, I-I’d sing them for her…I’d button the dresses she t-twirled in.” And at those words, it felt as if ice had been rushed down Dipper’s back. Goosebumps littered his skin at the dawning realization; Jehan had a little sister.

“…They d-didn’t let me… she was hitting – hitting the glass of her w-window with her tiny fists, looking down at me on-on the l-lawn, my f-father took out a sh-sh-shotgun, I ran… I-I had to.”

There was no drinking now. Just heavy sobbing for quite some time. Without the young man realizing it, he had completely hurtled Dipper around.

“A-Ah, I’m s-silly, l-leaving Michi- _urrp_ -gan,” Jehan’s voice had a façade of cheerfulness. “I-I should’ve thought of it…” He laughed, monotone and breathy. “God…y’know, y-y’know what, D-Dipper?” He giggled. “You’re almost like David.” Jehan paused, and he could hear the bitter smile. “But you’re not him, you never were.”

Dipper closed his eyes.

Suddenly, Jehan’s voice returned to its softness, filtering gently into his ear. “Dipper – listen, y-you…you deserve so much more, so much more…”

He shook his head. “Jehan, don’t say that.”

“I-I’m serious…I’m s-ser– _urrp_ –serious. M-Me? I d-don’t have a-anything anymore.” The drinking began again. “I-I’ve had m-my run. It’s all…all g-good…I-I think, they’ll…they’ll find me soon.”

He dreadfully kept shaking his head, “No,” he chastised, “don’t talk like that, Jehan.”

Jehan laughed. “P-Perhaps…perhaps not…I like this town, I like...I like t-that y-you’re…m-my friend.”

“I like that we’re friends too,” Dipper assured, “Jehan, stay in town, I-I’ll go to your apartment with my uncle, we’ll move you out, you’ll stay here if you don’t feel safe – “

“Shh,” Jehan whispered. “Shh, D-Dipper, ah, y-you’re being so silly, don’t bother…I am safe, Dipper. You don’t need to w-worry about me, I’ll be fine…I’m always fine…listen, Dipper. I m-mean it. Y-You deserve t-to be happy.” He said those last few words in a warm, motherly voice despite his drunkenness. “I’ll n-never have mine, not a-anymore, you deserve t-to be happy, your sister is d-dead, y-you deserve to be happy…”

Dipper couldn’t grasp it. This was all too much to take in from someone as sweet and lovely as Jehan. “Stop – stop drinking, please stop saying that–“

“A-Alright, let–let me just…I’ll stow my liquor, okay…okay…” There was rustling, glass tinkling. “Y-You were lovely to–to talk w-with, Dipper. Good–Goodbye.”

“Jehan, please - " 

The other line hangs up.

He buried his face in his hands.

 

 

Sunday morning and there was no call from Jehan, not even a text. He must have gone to church by himself. Dipper wanted nothing more but to go check on him, even visit his apartment, but again felt that he would be breaching his privacy. Jehan had assured him that he was fine. Instead, Dipper sent him a simple text.

_10: 32 AM_

_Be safe, I’m always here if I’m needed._

There was no reply.

Dipper left his phone charging upstairs, going down to help Grunkle Stan repair a broken attraction in the museum exhibit. A taxidermied jackrabbit just had its antlers torn off by a rowdy child.

While Dipper was collecting industrial glue from the tool shed, his phone was ringing upstairs.

 

 

Three missed calls and Dipper still had not answered. Jehan smiled to himself and went up to his apartment room. He closed the door behind him, ignoring the newest, fresh bundle of roses by the counter. He let his eyes linger over the scratch-littered screen of his phone at that name, _Dipper Pines_ , and sent him a text.

_11: 43 AM_

_I’ll be alright._

He put his phone under his pillow. With a light heart and a certain swiftness, he put away all that was on his desk; the figurine of the Virgin Mary, the cassette tapes, the perfume, and put them on his bed. He didn’t stop until the surface had cleared.

He then rummaged into the bottom of his closet until he got to a worn little box underneath all his belongings. Sitting on the floor, he sifted through the fake ID’s and credit cards etched with the name _Jehan Clark O. Brent,_ forged certificates and a little pink ribbon, until he found his photo. A 5x5 once framed in the living room. He closed the box, put it back, took the picture and opened a bottom drawer.

He searched through the boxes of gifted jewelry; white and red silk boxes, pearl necklaces in thick plastic, brooches, silver rings and gold bracelets, all from admirers who didn’t know any better trying to woo a stripper. He found it soon; a small package in purple cloth, tied with ratty string. He placed the picture and this package on the desk.

With a marker from the items on his desk, he wrote this on the wall above his bed; _GIVE IT ALL TO THE POOR._ He smiled at this.

The package had three things; chalk, a small dagger, and a folded crisping parchment. Instructions. He unfolded the parchment and hastily copied the circular figure of symbols upon the desk with chalk. He then placed his picture in the middle of it.

With the dagger, he set the blade near the fold of his elbow. He closed his eyes and bit his lip before he gave it a slow cut. His blood swelled a thick red out of the wound. With two fingers he took his own blood and crossed out his eyes in the picture.

What had he to fear?

He took the parchment, reading aloud. “Triangulum, entangulum…”

The room shuddered as air swept in from the window. Feeling a shiver down his spine, he braced himself to continue. As foreign words left his lips, everything surrounding him began to tremble, stutter, shifting from reality. The walls flickered from cream to gray, swallowing all over while a blue-white brightness seemed to come from nowhere. Outside the window, from the bright noon, the world plunged into dark, with tiny pinpricks of the galaxy.

A sharp ringing noise got louder and fiercer to the point that he thought his eyes and ears would be knifed out, until the ringing zipped dead and the brightness sunk into a the hazy gray of the apartment room.

The space of his desk looked like a bomb of dark matter had blown up all over it – inky blackness faded as it spread around the mirror, walls and the floor. This miniature explosion was in the uncanny shape of a triangle.

Did it fail? Jehan’s breath raced. He looked around the desk, heart beating fast.

He heard a deep shrill of fire burning. Blue light swarmed the room from behind him.

“I told you to let me do you a favor, stop believing in gods."

Jehan turned back. Bill Cipher was floating beside the crucifix above his window, looking bored. He had a fire lit in his hand below the wooden cross, where the foot of the crucifix was slowly flitting to ash. When the wood had burned halfway to the arms, Bill blew out the fire.

Jehan glared. “I believe in one God.”

Bill chuckled at him. “Yeah, yeah, the father almighty, the whole enchilada, he's on flatbread, whatever. You said you’ll never use it, the summoning stuff! Wow!” There was an edge of exhaustion in his lively, echoing tone. Reluctance, even.

“The boy–Dipper Pines–said you didn’t answer when he was summoning you. Why answer me?”

“You're a special customer. Kid told me to lay off. Exactly what I’m doing.”

Jehan grit his teeth. “You said you had eyes in many places. Have you been watching him? Do you see him right now?”

“Deals only operate on their stated conditions.” Bill rolled his one eye. “Of course I have, and I can.”

He stared, incredulous. “You knew this whole time he was looking for you and you didn’t even respond to him?”

“It would be pointless,” Bill argued. Even if he didn’t have a face, Jehan could sense the resentment in his triangular form. “Kid told me to leave and stay gone. I left, did what he asked, I stayed away. It’s what he wanted, the idiot.” He said each word acridly, but with underlying defeat. “The parasite is dead. It starved while he was in coma. He ain’t going through depression and he’s not dumb enough to sink back in. He doesn’t need me anymore. In a few months he’ll move on, he has a life now, he’ll find someone else. He can be happy on his own. Now _what_ do you want from me?”

“I’ll tell you what I want from you,” Jehan's voice was suddenly brave. “You sack up your luggage, I don’t care. The boy is miserable. You take your head out of your arse and go back to Dipper Pines.”

Bill just looked at him. Who was the quick talker and thinker among the two could not say anything.

“Nothing comes free, I know, I’ve learned that the hard way,” Jehan continued. “Take my body.”

Bill was stunned. “Are you stupid? Do you really want to hurl yourself back in the fire? I just did you a favor! I left your body!”

“You stabbed me in the _liver!_ ”

“Insurance!”

Jehan scoffed, sending the demon another burning glare. He pursed his lips, raised his eyes to the ceiling, swallowed, and looked at Bill again. “I’m serious. Take my body, I don’t care, not anymore.”

A moment of silence. “They’re coming, aren’t they?”

Jehan frowned.

“Why don’tcha want me to kill ‘em? That’s what they usually ask for.”

“I don’t want them to die.”

“Oh, _saint_ ,” Bill sarcastically praised. “Why do you care about your oppressors? It’s ridiculous.”

“I’m not a murderer.”

Bill squinted at him, scoffing. “Jeez, why are you such in a hurry to throw away your life?”

“I had one. Now I don’t.” He said. “Dammit, I am fed up, Cipher. I don’t want to live like this. I’m tired of running away, I’m tired of being lost. I’m sick of waking up in this town knowing that I don’t belong. But I never had a choice. I have to force myself _every_ day to keep going. I don’t know the person I was, or the person I am now.”

He lowered his head. Somewhere between his words, his voice had cracked. He looked up again, tears welling in weary eyes that had seen enough of the world's misery, and softly said, “I want to go home, Bill. I just...I just want to go home.”

Bill was silent for a very long time. He stared intently at Jehan, thinking him over, and then hummed with a professional air.

“What’s your deal, nightingale?”

 

 

Bill held out a flame-covered hand.

“Let me say it again. I take your body as a vessel and put you to rest.”

Jehan took a deep breath. “Then return to Dipper Pines.” He reached his trembling hand toward Bill’s.

“Are you sure, nightingale?”

Jehan said nothing, looked Bill in the eye like a defeated man accepting the blade in his heart, and shook the demon’s hand.

* * *

MFHTWE OZC GAYPT HFGF RTWMEI EIE ITDE  
YSF VJDTEQ XBKJD B SFNSIKTDE  
XSPUQO PNJ VOOB L MOAPMY KLDE  
GPGOWP GOW JPU YSFY QLZ TT HBSYP  
DIUSFR’X SJDIPO WMPSEFMPUYD  
BRJ YPW KZVNI TO JFNPB’X SPUXP  
IIX DPUQ SBS SPWEW SBD NWM RTZUS  
MP XAX EPO UCFTYJ GOW SJS THO GTZE

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This is the one last go for 2015, my dears. I hope that Dipper’s reaction to loss for Bill was clearly represented to be different from Mabel’s. My dear Jehan, it had to be done.
> 
> Here's a trivia for you guys to answer: **what is Jehan's real name?** Clue: a significant other person's name is given in this chapter. Research it out, dudes. If one of you ever guesses Jehan’s real name, **I’m giving you all a bonus cipher to crack during the wait for Chapter 14**. Comment your guesses! ~~and what you also found out~~
> 
>  **[EDIT JAN. 2, 2016]:** I've been gone for the whole day on a road trip only to come back and happily find out that yup, **Jehan's real name has been uncovered!** Two people have found it out, namely [AzureStars](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4104916/comments/48193183) and [PineTrees_Cipher394](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4104916/comments/48198754)! Jehan's real name is **Jonathan.** It's taken from the Bible story of David and Jonathan who formed a covenant of friendship, written in the books of Samuel.
> 
> Bible scholars have painted David and Jonathan's covenant as just an intense form of friendship, but I beg to differ; if Jonathan was a woman, the book of Samuel pertaining to David and Jonathan's covenant would have to make way for another separate chapter because Jonathan would have way too many babies and David would've had to skip some battles because he cares about Jonathan too much. To prove this, I quote Samuel I 18:1, 2, 3 and 20:3, 4,17 and 23:
> 
> 1 _Now when he had finished listening to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul._
> 
> 2 _Saul took David that day, and would not let him go home to his father's house anymore._
> 
> 3 _Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul._
> 
> 3 _Then David took an oath again and said, "Your father certainly knows that I have found favor in your eyes, and he has said, 'Do not let Jonathan know this, lest he be grieved.' But truly, as the Lord lives and as your soul lives, there is but a step between me and death._
> 
> 4 _So Jonathan said to David, "Whatever you yourself desire, I will do it for you."_
> 
> 17 _Now Jonathan again caused David to vow, because he loved him; for he loved him as he loved his own soul._
> 
> 23 _"And as for the matter which you and I have spoken of, indeed the Lord be between you and me forever."_
> 
> And my favorite one, Samuel I 20:41, when David and Jonathan have to part ways because David has to battle the Philistines:
> 
> _...David arose from a place toward the south, fell on his face to the ground, and bowed three times. And they kissed one another; and they wept together, but David more so._
> 
> Yeah, fuck me sideways, homophobic Bible scholars. I could keep quoting, such as this [Mishnah sage characterization](http://www.uscj.org.il/commentaries/shabbat-mahar-hodesh-5765/) of Jonathan and David's relationship (I direct you to the second paragraph), but it would take up too much space. Bottom line, it would be ridiculous to say that David and Jonathan's relationship was purely platonic.
> 
> Above all, congratulations! As promised, the bonus cipher is now placed in the last part of this chapter! It is coded in Vigenere. If you have paid attention to the ciphers from the previous chapters, this will be easy to crack. Have fun decoding it! ~~and trying to make sense of it~~ **[END OF EDIT]**
> 
> 15% of this was written while I was tipsy on red holiday wine. Blame my mother
> 
> The 60’s musical song was inspired by a [now deleted] Tumblr post by dirtygfconfessions. Basically it said, "I want Stan to replace all the characters in Les Miserables and change all the lyrics to 'her aim is getting better'." ~~I am trash I'm sorry~~ I still have the file with my tags on it, I may give it out when I'm asked for it ~~by other trash like me~~
> 
> This chapter sets all the pieces on board. See you sometime around January, I’m not sure yet about the publish date. For this, I recommend you all to check out the [aesthetic blog](http://even-stars-disappear.tumblr.com/) for alerts to stay informed.
> 
> One chapter left. Happy New Year!


	14. Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"And the gale, howls from the north, the sail, head on; the waves are lifted to the stars..."_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> -Virgil, _The Aeneid_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Forgive me?

**Chapter 14**

_I’ll be alright._

In his head, he told himself that he trusted Jehan, that the man really was okay. Dipper knew calling him was just a few taps away, but because of some unperturbed respect, like a sinner avoiding the altar, like the beggar who dared not raise his eyes to royalty, Dipper did not attempt to contact him.

The conversation of Saturday night left him to see Jehan as this opaque wall, a stronghold, a barricade. He was no longer this precious thing of silent smiles and odd clothes and cherry pies. The curtains were torn from Dipper’s eyes and he saw what Jehan truly was; a grenade, an instrument of war.

Dipper once thought that he never truly knows him. Good God, he was too damn right.

He worried for him as much as he was struck by him. For the rest of the day, he held back his anxiety for Jehan’s safety and did not contact him.

On Monday noon, even as he stood at the front door of the shabby apartment, he couldn’t get himself to enter. His eyes drooped, he blinked frequently. The night before, he couldn’t sleep well. Behind his eyes were gloomy scenarios of Jehan with his backpack over his shoulder, wearing that brown coat of worn fur, sneaking out the building to take the first bus out of town, running away for who now knows how many times. What if Jehan left? Where was he now, and did he have a place to go?

What if they found him?

It was too soon. Vaguely, it came to him that he only met Jehan seven days ago. There came a spark in his head the fragile form lying on a white bed, in a room that reeked of sanitation. He knew him for a week. It couldn't be even true that Dipper exactly  _knew_ him. 

The door in front of him clicked open. He stepped away. A short, old man had a golden retriever excitedly pulling out of the doorstep by a leash. It briefly sniffed at Dipper’s pant leg. He felt the old man peering curiously at him with cloudy eyes.

The old man had an easy air about him. He hummed, a look of practiced welcome crossing his face. Dipper remembers seeing that exact expression on Stan. “You here to rent out a space, lad?”

“I’m not,” Dipper answers, realizing this old man must be the landlord. A little peculiar. “I was just wondering, did...did anyone in your apartment, uh, vacate their space? The guy in 314?"

The old man grinned gleefully. “Oh, _Jo_ nathan? He’s still in here, ‘course. In fact, the fella came back with groceries just this morning. Took the paper and had a whole styro coffee cup thing.”

Dipper heavily sighed out.

“We’ve got a Donathan and an Enathan renting out here too, just wanted to clear it up. Do you wanna head in and see him?”

“No, no thank you.”

“’Aight, suit yourself. Have a nice day, sasquatch.”

It was hard to ignore the nickname. “You too, I guess.”

Watching the golden retriever wiggle out of its owner’s grasp and sprint through the sidewalk, Dipper allows himself a moment to breathe rather deeply, leaning on his side at the doorway.

 

 

The afternoon blurred by carelessly, with Dipper not noticing the hours that passed. The sky was dripping into early evening and faint shadows of trees began to fade into the darkening porch. The last of tourists had left about an hour ago while Stan had taken the car to “buy parts”, whatever that meant. Dipper wasn’t listening much. He had been going up the steps when Stan left through the backdoor.

He passed by the box of Bill’s clothes with a heavy glance and found himself standing in front of his closet. He wondered, pursed his lips, and opened the door.

The only thing hanging in it was his blue coat jacket. Just looking at it already made Dipper feel warm and safe. He took it out and slipped it on, even if it wasn’t that chilly.

He went out of the shack and into the forest, feet leading him almost unceremoniously. There was just a small amount of light and Dipper could only discern vague colors and silhouettes. He kept on, however, determined by some force of ennui. He still knew the paths and turns of the trees from his internal compass, and did not get lost.

How long did he walk? Dipper only looked forward. He could see the moon peek from an orange-violet horizon between the trees. He paused by a small creek, where a big slab of stone rested silently by it. Dipper sat down, feet tired.

He stared deep into the forest for quite a while before his hands began to wander into the pockets of his coat to keep the growing cold off his hands, when he felt something in the inner lining of the pocket. Dipper prodded at the small bulk, then remembered his coat had another little crevice by the side pockets.

He shoved his hand in the crevice, grasped, and pulled the bulk out. It was a pair of leather gloves. Bill’s.

More than a year ago, it now felt, he had found them on the carpet after he had summoned Bill. He stared at them rather mindfully. Some pinching pain had taken over his heart. Halfway, he felt like smiling, but his lips only quivered.

He closed his eyes, flitting through his head the dream of his sister. Visiting Wendy, the shooting range, pushing the cart with him in it. Dancing in the middle of the street to old music. Sitting side by side on the front porch after hours. Running away into the night to set the town on fire. Breaking into the theater, no music and no shows, only to realize that maybe he had loved him for longer than he thought. At dusk, to sleep, to be what they were for the last, last time.

He fisted the gloves in his hand. He felt a little bump inside one of the gloves.

Dipper’s thoughts sank and zeroed in as he straightened out the glove. Yes, there was definitely something stuffed inside the right hand glove. Quickly, he dug his fingers inside it and felt a small, coarse ball with the tips of his fingers. He gripped at it and took it out. It was a small, crumpled piece of paper. Dipper’s fingers barely kept still, his heart loud in his ears as he spread out the crinkled ball.

In big, quick scrawl was a single word: _DWWLF._

Dipper made the quick decode in his head.

He stood up and looked back between the trees. The Mystery Shack was a tiny wooden thing that stood silently from way afar. His feet began to move in a misaligned jog, but it grew into a sprint before he knew it. Then he was running, careless of the branches that whipped against his coat or the tree roots that made his feet skimp. The forest was soon behind him, and he went straight up to the backdoor then bolted up the steps.

He stared directly in front of him, his eyes wide and focused. He grabbed the attic door’s knob with cold, sweating hands and swung the door open.

The blond head symmetrical within the triangle window couldn’t be mistaken. There definitely was another figure in the room. Dipper did not dare move.

A familiar form was perched atop his desk. From where he stood, he was alarmed by the unexpected presence. For a moment he was hit with an initial shock from recognition; _Jehan? What are you doing here?_

The technical side of his brain told him that face was one from recent events, but before it could completely register to him, before he could make a process between looks and character, his thoughts were gripped with something that rose above logic. He was dawned with a memory that defied time.

Before he could fasten that face with the idea of the vessel, it all came hurtling backwards to a point where his name and the thought of him was once again buried into obscurity; the cry of Dipper’s heart seated itself in that place. Impulsive selfishness is something we never mean to do. It had nothing to blame, because that kind of selfishness is not rooted in contempt.

Dipper didn’t hate Jehan. In fact, Dipper _venerated_ him. But Jehan was one thing, and this entity was another. Jehan held his honor, not his love.

We are blind to our impulsive selfishness, and as he stood there in the doorway, the one pounding thought in his head was one sweet, sweet name; Bill.

He knew the wild twinkle of those eyes too well, held so fondly in the back of his thoughts that wide, roguish smile. His proud profile of raised forehead and strong features put Dipper in a trance. They held gazes, and Dipper was unconsciously swallowing him all up with his eyes, so unbelieving to finally see him _here_. Dipper’s face fell and crumpled as the moments trickled by.

 Slowly, Bill’s expression began to change. The smile began tight-lipped, then a sort of pout. His shoulders fell as he tilted his head. He opened his mouth, hesitated, and heedfully greeted, “Pine Tree.”

Dipper gulped as Bill hopped of the desk and got to his feet. On the side of the desk was the thin shape of a cane. Bill was dressed like how he usually did, a crisp-cuffed dress shirt, a dark suit jacket, fitting pants and dress shoes like a stray from an outdated stack of prom polaroids. Charm and cavalier.

“Nice to see you again, kid.”

Dipper slowly walked towards him, eyes blurring over. He stiffened his jaw, looking like words were flying in his thoughts but was unable to let them out. He did not stop until he was directly in front of him, just a one-foot distance.

Something inside him snapped. Dipper hardened his fist and swung it  _hard_ at Bill, impacting him square in the jaw.

Bill’s torso lurched to the side. A bruise flowered underneath his cheekbone. Both could hear every coarse breath he took and the soft spitting of what Dipper guessed was saliva and blood.

"Where _were_ you?!" Dipper roared. He felt like the inside of his veins were pins and needles, his face clotting thick with tears. He couldn’t seem to see anything in detail as he all but lunged at Bill once more and began to throw punches at the demon.

He swung, he lashed at him. He shook, he saw red, he was so so breaking apart and he didn't fucking know why he wanted to beat the shit out of Bill. But maybe it was his fists doing the work of what should have been when Bill pulled the act with Waddles, and along with all the rumbling shit he desperately felt for him, he just had to. He just fucking _had to._

It was Dipper who wanted to hit Bill, never the other way around. Bill was trying to hold Dipper back, dodging the blows and taking some, but not once did he attempt to hurt him. They fought to take the other down, Dipper by swinging his fists and Bill by trying to shove him against some surface. Like this it went, Dipper channeling his sobs into punches, but if he had touched him more than just with bleeding knuckles and hard fists, Dipper would have succumbed into just wrapping him in his arms and hugging him close, would have slipped into how much he missed having his warmth, but no - Dipper's rage kept winding him up and he was unable to do anything but watch himself go.

“I _wanted_ you back!” Dipper cried, “I did my best! Goddammit, I summoned you! I missed you, I wanted you back! I tried everything, I tried _everything_  but you never came! You _never_ came back to me!”

He was still struggling and swinging as Bill took advantage of him speaking and shoved him against the wall by the foot of his bed. He was shushing him, telling him to calm down. Bill forced Dipper’s hands by the sides of his head so he couldn’t throw any more blows, keeping him pinned there with his body.

“Idiot, I did what you asked me to. I left you because you begged me to leave you. If you think it never hurt me to let you go, you’re wrong. Pine Tree, it hurt me. So damn much. But I did it for you, even if I never wanted to leave.”

Dipper unwillingly weakens. His fisted hands uncurl and begin to tremble instead. He bows his head, sobbing hard. “B-But...I-I looked f-f-for you,” his voice sounded pitiful, “I-I wanted y-you back, I s-swear, from when I woke up from coma all I thought about was having you back – “

“I knew you were summoning me.”

For a moment, a mirror of rage flashed in Dipper’s eyes, yet this was quickly doused over with dejection.

“What?” He croaked, voice small.

Bill nodded.

He was falling, falling so painfully apart. “Why…why did you never answer me?” Dipper had the horrifying thought that the reason why Bill never returned was because all those days and moments they had spent together were nothing to Bill, that the demon never felt the way he thought he did. Even if Bill had just denied it with brutal honesty, it was still a thought that loomed over him like a monster of the shadows.

Bill frowned. “Because you didn’t need me anymore.”

Dipper looked faint. “What are you talking about?”

“I…I thought you had no use for me anymore. You’re on your own feet now. You’re not going down a dark road anymore. The parasite in your mindscape died of hunger while you were in coma. You’re better now, you have a hope at being okay again, at living normally. B-Because face it, I only came to you for one reason. To make you happy, to get you outta the dark place you were. But - but in the end it wasn't about your soul anymore. It wasn't about me taking what I wanted from trying to fix you. You weren't j-just some - some token anymore. You became something that I shouldn't have let it be, and damn you, damn you for making me, just - dammit, Dipper.”

Fuck, that name. It was everything; anger, frustration, it hit him right in the fucking gut. The roughness, the harsh voice, the weakness despite how Bill gnawed through his name all filled his heart with something great and terrible and swelling. It made it hard to stand on both feet, made it even harder to breathe.

Dipper shook his head. “Bill, n-no, that’s n-not – “

“It is. All the reasons why I came into your life were gone and…and you never – never said that…” Bill trailed off, only looking hopelessly at Dipper. Certain portions of Bill’s jaw area and neck were purpling with bruises, but he didn’t seem to feel any of them.

 _That you loved me too_ , Dipper silently thought.

It was Dipper’s turn to grip Bill by his shoulders. “Did – did you really think, that after everything, all that we had, all that you showed me, that the only reason why I was with you was because I was depressed?”

Bill closed his eyes. He was trying his best not to shed tears.

“Bill, listen. Despite it, I knew I still wanted to be with you. I felt something between us not because I was depressed.  You’re not a tool to fix me. You weren’t just an escape anymore. You were something else for me, you were better than medicine, and it doesn’t matter if I die; at this point I’m no longer scared of it. I’d rather take death than to have lived without you, and if every reason why you came into my life was gone, then please, think about all the reasons why you stayed.”

Dipper cast his eyes down. “I made you leave, I know. It was my biggest mistake and I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry, Bill.”

Bill cradled his cheek. “I’m sorry too, Pine Tree.”

Dipper heaved a quiet sob. _Pine Tree._ It was still so wonderful to hear. He gently pulled Bill into a hug, grasping at his back and pressing his chest against his own. He felt Bill’s heartbeat and snuggled into him, until all he could feel on his pulse were heady locks of blond hair.

“Pine Tree,” Bill whispers from behind his back, “Hey, Pine Tree. Wanna know something?”

“Mmh?”

“I like you a lot.”

Dipper didn’t dwell on the broken mood, instead allowing himself a tiny laugh. “I like you a lot too.”

He just held him, or rather, they held unto each other. And louder than any words, than any gesture, in silence they smile to themselves, knowing in both their hearts that something more beautiful is about to begin.

 

 

Jehan knew the door that stood ajar in front of him. Very pale rosewood, not too old. Through the well-lit crack, a familiar skippy 60’s tune played softly. He could discern the pastel yellow walls of the room, which felt like it belonged to a small child. He knew the floor of polished oak, recognition coming forth from six years ago. Looking down the hall, he saw two more rooms of the same pale rosewood, then the staircase going downstairs. Pictures of a couple’s humble wedding in a familiar county church decorated one area of the staircase wall.

This was a house, this had been his home.

Bill had listened. _I just want to go home._

He brought back his attention to the slightly open door in front of him. He was washed with a strong, fluttering emotion; unexpected gratitude.

Because this room was where he stood to braid thick, black hair with his careful fingers, where he tuned up the radio and danced with a tiny hand pulling at his sleeve, where he sat and told her all about the boy who played the drums. This room had been the one he had struggled to open, screaming at the top of his lungs as his father dragged him down the stairs, not letting him say goodbye.

His joy and gratitude sank. Jehan remembered the tiny headline in the newspaper, _Michigan: Ten-year-old girl in ICU after a car collision in front of school._ He remembered calling home, something he had sworn he’d never do again, with the last of his pennies from a cold February night. How his fingers froze on the dial pad, his thoughts in terror as the detached sharpness of the little article bashed through him again and again; _going home from school – serious abrasion in ribcage area –head trauma – will never walk anymore._ And oh, his mother’s cold monotone through the receiver, _You aren’t part of this family. I told you the last time you called. Rebecca hates you, she’s forgotten you as her brother. Never contact us again._

But he firmly told himself that it didn’t matter if she didn’t love him anymore. _He_ still loved her, she was his only sister and he loved her, even if the world stopped turning, even if the ground became sky. Even if she didn’t love him he’d still give everything for her.

He made the deal to save Rebecca at the brink of her death. He didn’t think twice, he loved all too much the only person who understood him in that house. He’d give his all for her. Because of Rebecca, that house became a home.

Even if she did hate him, seeing her one final time would be the greatest bliss. To love another person is to see the face of God.

He passed right through the door, nothing but a soul. If he could manifest physically, he’d have shed a tear. There she was, a slight girl in a wheelchair, facing away from him as she sat at her desk. She’s grown in the six years he last saw his little sister; her black hair hung in long tassels on the rest of the wheelchair, and while she was sitting, he knew that just like that, she was past his elbows in height.

He would have smiled. Rebecca, as he last remembered, was fond of drawing. At five, she could draw fantastic caricatures of her friends and family. Hanging on their fridge was a cartoon rendition of the four of them; mother and father, brother and sister. Jehan now sees all the drawings she had taped on her desk wall. There were people and sceneries. She’s learned to shadow instead of line. Her skill had become impressive for her age; though it still held that inconsistency, they were drawings that showed the artist was well on their way to being better.

Rebecca must be drawing something. Jehan moved on closer, looking over her shoulder.

To the left of her sketching pad was a very recent family photo. He recognizes his parents in formal attire, standing above his sister in a grand Victorian chair. She was wearing a plush, navy dress, lace over her collarbones, ending in a dainty collar at her neck. Her wavy hair was cleared from her face with ribbons. The picture, though expertly photographed with its smiling characters, looked forlorn.

He glanced at his sister, only to see she was still in the dress she had worn in the picture.

She had drawn the rest of photo in great detail, but now, she focused on another person in her drawing. A fourth figure.

Standing beside her was a young man with a gentle face and soft posture, wearing a shy, fine smile. If it weren’t for the tailored suit, one would have said it was a lady. Jehan recognized the carefully sketched face as his own.

Her pencil was shading slowly at areas of his suit, all the realistic creases and folds. She’d alter between that and sweeping at his neatly brushed hair, so unlike the volumed curls he’d mess in hairspray. He looked very young, maybe only four years older than the girl in the chair when at truth, the gap was thirteen. She had drawn him so carefully, in well-memorized detail, as if she had a picture of him right beside the picture of her parents; she caught his round eyes that clinched at the sides, his nose, his poutish little mouth.

Jehan’s thoughts raced. Why was she drawing him into the picture of her family if she hated him?

He looked around the room, more closely this time. Pages of her drawings that decorated the wall starred not only mother and father, but another figure; her brother. However, she kept the pictures of him in discreet places among other drawings, as if she didn’t want her parents seeing them.

As if she was told to never draw pictures of him again, but kept doing so, under radar.

The joy was coming back, pouring through him quickly. It was there for him to believe.

For six years of his life, he fed himself with the knowledge that his sister hated him. For six years he struggled to survive with the haunting reality that he had no family, no home, not even her anymore. He had thought he was well and truly alone.

But God, he was just lied to. Rebecca never hated him. She still loved him. It didn’t matter what he was or what their parents thought of him. She kept loving him until this day, enough to include him at every chance in what she considered _family._

He was in true happiness, joy that transcended life. Jehan felt that heaven was upon him, singing to his soul. A place in her heart was a place in the realm of the angels.

Jehan felt a bright presence behind him and turned back.

A radiant form of snowy wisps stood behind the siblings, all the youth of fifteen, watching with a smile, waiting with her open hand given for him to take.

Jehan gazed at her, then understood. He put his hand upon the shoulder of his sister one last time and stepped towards the bright being with a nod. He took the lovely hand, smiled back, and they walked, quietly fading with each step, into the background, into nothing, into salvation.

 

 

Bill sat at the passenger’s side, his feet propped up on the dash. The last of summer wind blew into the car, a crisp and earthy scent of the mountain town. It was well past five, and driving down the steep downhill highway gave the marvelous view of the orange-violet clouds mingling with the tops of green pine.

In the backseat were Dipper’s luggage and Bill’s one box of clothes. They were fifty miles away from the _Welcome To Gravity Falls_ road marker. Dipper continued to drive until they neared a certain area off the highway road, a flat part of the mountain where some cars could pause by the edge. Dipper pulled into the grassy expanse and stopped the car.

If only that part wasn’t in the middle of nowhere, a small shop could have stood by it. The towns side by side the highway didn’t think the road was their responsibility; that space didn’t even have a rail at the edge. Five vehicles could park, and they were alone. Dipper switched off the engine and the two got out. Bill was the first to go ahead and slide over to the hood of the car. Dipper stuffed the keys in his pocket and sat beside Bill, their shoes brushing by each other’s on the grass.

Below them was a breathtaking view of mountain stretches and forests with their rocky lakes, misty in the coming sunset. If he squinted far enough, to an area in the left of all that greenery, he could make out the tiny head of a pin that was Gravity Fall’s water tower.

They were in a lonely highway with all these great things above and below them that reduced a great height to a speck – clouds, sky, mountain, trees, wind, space – and it all made Dipper feel just how small he was compared to the world, that there were things incredibly greater than him. Fly to the moon, do nothing, do it all, die tomorrow, survive, it wouldn’t matter. The sun will still rise, the day will still turn to night, there will always be a tomorrow, a tomorrow with the volume of the world, and that tomorrow didn’t need him to rise again.

But he felt Bill hold his hand. He wasn’t looking at the boy, his deep eyes watching the descending sun. Dipper felt a twist in his heart and gave him a tender smile.

He was hit with a sudden amount of affection, not only for Bill, but for everyone else he loved then and now and perpetually. His family in California, Stan, Wendy, even Lazy Susan and God forbid – Pacifica. Then Bill, whom he could now scream into the sky that he _loved him_ , freely and immensely, without doubt and with nothing to hold him back.

Jehan – whom he thought of with a bittersweet pain, if it was gratitude or sadness, he didn’t know, and he spent a long moment hoping that his soul that had shone more wonderfully than his face was now at peace.

His smile grew wider at the thought of Mabel, whom he loved, unconditionally. He pondered, was she smiling down at them? Images of a childhood with her stuck out like a lump in his throat – water balloon fights, running away from gnomes, card games, littered scrapbook pieces and sweater towns. He loved her in the roots of his heart. She was the sweetness of a laugh, the bright of day, the twinkling comfort in darkness that lulled him to sleep every night.

The universe may be big and dark and beautiful, and he may be the smallest speck in it, but he could feel things so great, greater than all this space and vastness that held a million of _everything._

Because he had it too, that everything. Because he has a great thing with these spectacular people, as great and spectacular as that world of worlds beyond.

“Aren’t we losing travelling minutes for this?” Dipper chuckles, mostly to himself.

Bill shrugs against his shoulder, grinning. “We are, but you’re my favorite waste of time.”

Dipper laces their fingers together and doesn’t let go.

And above it all, beyond that everything, someone was smiling down at them.

 

 

**_Epilogue_ **

_New Year, 20—_

Outside, one would’ve mistaken the explosive sounds and sparking lights as flying bombs from a war field, if it weren’t from the excited shouts and yells from the other residents living in their street. Thin smoke floated above the pavement while the dark sky above lit up with bright, festive showers. Five blocks away was the community park and eight blocks away from that was the mall center, all firing colors in the sky, that small area of a California town welcoming the new year.

Through the living room windows were little blips of brightness. From the kitchen, someone in a funny yellow sweater cartwheeled through the beanie chair with what looked like a box of matches in hand.

“Bill!” Came an excited yell from outside. “We’re missing out!”

Bill came dashing out the front door of their apartment room, running out the confetti-littered hall with its banner of _Happy New Year!_ He met Dipper out the front lawn, where the boy was out in the brightened street with a box of assorted, unlit fireworks by his feet. He was looking at him with a wide smile, already holding one dangerous-looking firework at his side.

Bill tossed him the box of matches. Dipper stuck the firework shell back into its bound set on the pavement, struck a match, and set it on the fuse.

“That’s gonna go blowing up like the rest of ‘em?” Bill asked, hearing his pulse in his ears. Dipper took him by the hand and stepped back quickly.

“Like the rest of them!” Dipper laughed. “Brace your ears, man! Three, two, one!”

The fuse hit. “Look up!” Dipper told him, just in time for the glittery-sounding flash of the firework to zip past and disappear. There was nothing at first, but there came a snapping, colossal bang as the firework seemed to hit the surface of the night sky. With the ear-crushing sound came a huge, blinding sprinkle of white and red and yellow sparks.

Dipper cheered with his fists up in the air as Bill wondered at the sky with a giddy smile.

The two continued to plant the fireworks on the front yard’s pavement, both of them too fucking happy to care about anything else. There came many successive yells of _three, two, one,_ followed by shooting sparks into the darkness. Among them were smoke and smiles and laughter, light in their eyes as bright as the skyline. The pounding sounds of fireworks blowing seemed to blur away. At some point, when the cake-type fireworks ran out, Dipper took out the sparklers.

He held two and lit them up at once, handing one to Bill.

“Do you still feel like playing tag around Roman candles?” Bill chuckles.

Dipper nudged him playfully. His heart was in his ears. “I’d like to, but I’ve already burned part of my pant leg so – “

“Right-o, kid. Sit in the curb with me?”

“You _still_ call me that! Unbelievable,” the boy rolled his eyes with a snort, going to sit on the side of the pavement, his sparkler still going nuts. “Technically our age differences are out of proportion, so calling me a kid is all question marks.”

Bill sat right beside him with a smarmy laugh. “Hoo boy, I always like your little side rants, they’re just a _dor_ able.”

Dipper could face palm. He was totally capable of it. He had one hand holding a sparkler and the other resting on his half-burned pant leg, but he didn’t. He could argue more, say that Bill sounded like a suburban mother embarrassing her fifth grade kid, but in that powder-littered pavement and the sky above firing with light, nothing made as much sense as being with him, _existing_ with him, to be the one to listen to that voice and feel his shoulder brush up against his own. There is something magical about bouts of light in darkness and sitting close with the one you love.

“Happy new year,” he tells Bill, a little dreamily.

Bill brings the tip of his sparkler with Dipper’s. “Happy new year, Pine Tree.”

In the same night, probably not at the same moment, but with still the same night sky as the two had lit up, miles and miles and a border away was a quiet little mountain town. At New Year’s Eve, the town hall would only be one of the few times in a year where Gravity Falls will get to experience a fireworks display. From a triangle window of a creaking, old shack did an old man listen to these lone explosions, one by one. This fireworks display was the only thing that lit up the night, and therefore its brightness made even the water tower flash with light. Eruptions of light flickered on the attic’s sloping walls, flashing on a little girl’s bed and the painting above an old mattress.

Stan sat on the little girl’s bed. There was a white sheet crumpled at the foot of it, the sheet Stan had put over the bed to protect it from dust when Dipper had left earlier that year.

He had bought his grandnephew a second-hand Chevrolet as a parting gift (Gleeful’s Used Autos was no longer owned by Bud Gleeful; a stooping man in his thirties now ran the shop. Asking questions to a guy wiping off a spraypainted hipster van, the new owner was Bud Gleeful’s accountant. How he got hold of the business was unknown). It was the same car he and Bill, the flashy cashier guy who came back out of thin air, used to land trip back to California. The last Stan saw of Dipper was his happy face in the side mirror, and when he was too far to discern, his hand waving out the window.

He looked off the side with a sigh. A line of stuffed animals met his sight. Bunnies, bears, sheep, all remnants of a little girl’s childhood. A sock puppet was still hanging on the bed peg. Stan caught sight of a giraffe lagging behind the stuffed animal line, leaning off to the side. He reached to straighten it off, only to see the stuffed giraffe had a broken seam just under the belly. It was hastily stitched up, big spaces between ends.

Stan curiously took the giraffe in his lap. As he held it, he felt a strong, rectangular shape within the giraffe’s body. He examined the belly closer, finding that a corner of something was protruding through the stuffing, something like a box’s edge.

Hesitating at first, he undid the stitch and parted the seams. There was now the edge of what could be an old book; worn and yellow pages with a hardbound cover could be seen. Stan squinted at it. His palms were starting to sweat and grow cold. He stuck in his hand and pulled out the old book and held it up.

Against the dull brightness of fireworks from the window, Stan saw, from its sheening gold corners, that it was no book.

It was a journal. Journal number three.

Stan heaved, held it to his chest, and wept.

 

 

Soos’ pick-up truck drove in moderate speed down the quiet town’s road. Warm nights in Gravity Falls were a rare and pleasant thing. They had rolled down the windows for the two of them in the driver’s and passenger’s seat. Nothing played from the stereo; he and Stan were satisfied with watching the night sky above, which glinted like glitter had been studded all over it.

They were oblivious to the silence of the twins laying in the back. Dipper was staring at the scenery, feeling like he’ll never get used to such amazing view. He was, however, swinging between sleep, and would occasionally close his eyes for a minute or two.

Mabel, too, had fallen into silence. She lay with the quilts around her waist, arms folded under her head. But she was wide awake, staring at the night sky with some deep melancholy.

“Look at those stars, Dipper.” Mabel mumbled, her voice soft and sweet, looking up at the night sky’s twinkling expanse. “It’s...such a beautiful world we have. Wouldn’t...wouldn't it be so nice...so nice, to live in it?”

Dipper had thought twice, nodding at his twin sister’s words. Yes, it's such a beautiful world. Which world did Mabel belong? This one with earth and sea? Dipper smiled to himself, feeling his mind trip into sleep, the lovely voice of his sister saying something he doesn't quite remember being the final thing he understands.

Perhaps she belonged to the world of those stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: I’d like to thank these wonderful people for being part of this journey: my friends from Tumblr; h-reshii, rainbow-bucket-drinker, radiantchemicals, leminscrate, sylver-byrd, falllenwings21 and all who followed the blog and was regularly tuned in to Howl from the Tumblr community. Thank you!
> 
> Also to my ~~nerds~~ friends in real life who supported me: Anne_the_Dreamer, shppa and Patty. High fives all around to you guys who believed in Howl even in its small beginnings!
> 
> I extend my love to the awesome readers in AO3: Cas, Vi, Latte, Entrophy_by_Ophelia, Souzou¬_Writer, Ranter, casualsharkpuppy, Homestuck_bunny, Cyanide_Cipher, angel_fieramento_humano, aisukat, Cheshieru, Kenocide, freippuccino, SiriusDair, Spicedteaniall, Fordtato, FallenWings21, Spideronsilk, iPrincezzInuyokai, AzureStars, foxNoir, Spectrum, yandere_senpai, furtherconde, zephyr_dh, samifervent, lucicat, Pinetrees_Cipher394, Jenetic, DarlingDem, Ghostys, pinky90, paranoiapersonified (who helped bigtime for chapter 10) and all the anon/s and the silent readers and guests that left their kudos. I love all of you!
> 
> I reserve my very special thanks to these four:
> 
> dieslaudata, or as I knew them “Blackribbon”, who left the first comment on Howl. You were the very first who willed me to believe in this story and to keep writing it.
> 
> [levy120](http://levy120.tumblr.com/), who provided support for Howl from its very humble beginnings.
> 
> [billdip-national-library](http://billdip-national-library.tumblr.com/), for being kind of a batch mate (Howl and her blog started out in roughly the same time frame) and giving this fic support and is one of the initial reasons why Howl is where it is now.
> 
> Lastly and most nostalgically, my (now distant) friends from real life who introduced me to Gravity Falls more than a year ago – Kam, Ella and Dea. Without you, I wouldn’t be where I am now ehem I wouldn’t be TrashTM, and Howl would never have been written. Thank you. So, so much.
> 
> This journey is something that will stay with me forever, both the long days of drafting chapters, the people I met who inspired me, and the story of Howl itself. Thank you, I love you.
> 
> Anyway, heads up to Vi who was able to decode the cipher from last chapter! The Vigenere key is LBAF, wherein each letter is the first letter of all chapters that deal with the Four Loves in their summaries; Storge, Philia, Eros and Agape. Connecting it with the chapters, we have chapters 5, 6, 7 and 9 (Four-Twenty). LBAF is also what you get when you trans-decode the cipher in chapter 10’s mindscape scene with the statement repeated twice in it (Cecilia, you’re breaking my heart, you’re shaking my confidence daily). Congratulations, Vi (if you can, comment the deciphered text)!
> 
> I guess I’m back to fulltime shitposting and crackfic-that-I’ll-never-release writing. Ah, good ol’ days. You’ll still have me at [rich-people-water](http://rich-people-water.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr and [even-stars-disappear](http://even-stars-disappear.tumblr.com/) for all Howl-related things.
> 
> I've added two songs to the [playlist.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWN2vDi8ur5pMnolxsFxS3oJilSDK48tM) They're at numbers 28 and 37. Enjoy the new tunes!
> 
> Tbh, I'm very happy that this fic existed along the living timeline of when Gravity Falls was still on-air. It makes me believe that this story truly was part of experiencing Gravity Falls.
> 
> Again, thank you so much and I love you guys. See you around, dudes.
> 
> -Haile ♥♥♥
> 
> P.S. One last shot for the road; GLSSHU RZHV ZHQGB WKDW SKRQHFDOO!


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